The Wonder of Words

.

I have a friend with a literary bent who once asserted that the use of profanity was merely the mark of limited vocabulary.  Over the years I have come to realize that she was right.  Mind you, I’m not saying that I have abandoned swearing altogether. It is not as if, when heading for the bathroom at 2 AM and smashing my overly-sensitive foot against the door jam, I shriek,  “Oh, most high creator of the universe, if you would, please consign this copulating architectural feature to Dante's nethermost circles! Such exquisite agony!" No,  like many of us, I still burst out with the more prosaic: "GD f-ing door! Damn, that hurts!" But that is an expletive, not a conscious linguistic choice - not many considered synapses firing there. 

On the other hand in everyday, and certainly in professional conversation and composition our vocabulary is an indication of our education, our credibility, and more than we realize, our nature and personality. So we should choose our words carefully, with specific intent. In my field we speak of linguistic accommodation - adjusting vocabulary, sentence structure, speech, vocal patterns, gestures, etc., to accommodate the expectations of others.  In truth, in the academy we often take the practice to rather absurd extremes, peppering our conversations with the latest jargon to make it perfectly clear that, yes, I have read Professor Fuzzywort's latest work on the bandersnatchian dynamics inherent in the evolving, but still underrepresented, jabberwocky.

The point is this: words are tools and the more tools we have in our toolbox the better we can express our, initially inarticulate, feelings to a variety of audiences. There are certainly enough tools out there.  The Oxford English Dictionary flirts with 180,000 entries while the Global Language Monitor asserts that English acquired word number 1 million back in 2009. One shudders to think of the academic cat fights fueled by those wildly varying numbers. But that is not where I'm heading. I am more interested in how we acquire and use whatever words we do have.

For example, let us consider poetry.  And here I must admit a bias.  I am well aware that poetry can easily be a language of rage, a voice of the powerless against the powerful. A call to battle against injustice, bigotry and hatred. And, often, it should be.  Consider Bob Dylan, a wandering, renegade, youthful, troubadour whose calls to conscience bounced back decades later bearing a Nobel Prize for Literature. Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and the Gutheries, Woody and Arlo - rough-edged poets to stir the blood and raise the banners of resistance.

But no longer for me. Once, perhaps. In years gone by - pre-Internet days - a colleague and I engaged in a contest of "columns of righteous indignation." The idea was to craft an essay of overt confrontation on issues of social consciousness, but to do so with sufficient grace to allow the editor of our local paper to actually publish it. My partner in aggressive sarcasm has, sadly, passed on, but even were he about to egg me on, I think I would pass.  As I wander into my 7th decade, the call to vindictive prose grows faint. It is simply not worth the inevitable anger, the stomach acid, the spikes in blood pressure, the restless nights wrestling with the Furies of "Damn! What I should of said was .  . "

Instead, in what I hope will be my first full decade of Distilled Harmony, I think I prefer to explore the role of an agent of calm.  That role carries unique demands if one seeks to create not only prose, but also poetry of calm. When it comes to poetry, I tie myself firmly to the first and  second tenets of Distilled Harmony - Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty.  And that effort demands emphasizing a vocabulary of the calm; a tall order in this age of cyber bullying, internet trolling, and policy debates conducted in angry bursts of 146 characters or so.

Fortunately, the more gentle portions of my vocabulary hail from previous centuries.  It is mostly my mother's fault.  You see, in the basement of the modest home in which I was raised, stood a large green bookcase filled to overflowing with books. Books of all shapes and sizes, books that were already "golden oldies" in her childhood. Novels from the late 1800s, the early 1900's. Books written when grammar still held sway and when the rough edges of life were written gently. James Oliver Curwood, Gene Stratton-Porter, Harold Bell Wright, maybe a touch of Zane Gray. These were not, mind you, Dickens or Austin - though they did prepare me for later encounters with those more complex voices. Rather, they were in many ways the pulp fiction of their era. The plots utterly predictable, the stereotypes would curl your hair. But these were my earliest composition tutors; purists when it came to the rules brought to parsing prose.  Remember diagramming sentences?

And the words! Oh my, what a surfeit of words! Consider this conclusion to Curwood’s The River’s End (1919):

"He looked away into the shimmering distance of the night, and for a long time both were silent. A woman had found happiness. A man’s soul had come out of darkness into light.”  

OK, so it scores off the chart on the “sappy scale,” but for me, a youngster who would polish off a couple of the far more prosaic Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew mysteries before lunch it was, well, mysterious. Multisyllabic, with the sentence construction just a shade askew.  And then, not much later, I wandered, leaning heavily on Longfellow’s even older shoulders, along the  "shores of Gitche Gumee, Of the shining Big-Sea-Water.” So, while Dickens and Austin were lurking just around the corner, if you held still and listened ever so closely, there - did you hear it? It might have been the faint echo of an approaching Melville.

And speaking of words, there might be a few too many in this post already so let me close with an analogy [which started out shorter - but, oh well .  .  . ]:

When I was a kid in maybe 3rd or 4th grade, part of the Fall ritual was buying school supplies. My buddy Dan and I would hop on our bikes and pedal down the alley to Patton’s.  I don’t know if there was anything further to the store’s name, for us it was always just "Patton's." It was in many ways a remnant of the old general store era, as was Mr. Patton himself. He was, in our callow eyes, ancient - so, what, maybe 40? Slight of stature, with hooded eyes that would follow you suspiciously around the store. There was an old open-top soda machine. The bottles were suspended in icy water and you would put in your money and slide the bottle along a serpentine track to the open spot where you could pull out the bottle. YooHoo Chocolate Soda! I vaguely remember notions - thread and stuff.  And candy - lots of candy. Baseball card bubble gum.

But in the Fall it was school supplies. Somehow, no doubt as a result of a list distributed by the school board, Patton’s carried “pre-packaged school supplies.”  What this meant was that there were paper bags labeled - 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, etc., into which Mr. Patton, or one of his minions, had sorted the various tools we would need to confront the challenges of the coming year. Tablets, rulers, pencils, etc.  Starting in, oh, maybe 2nd grade, nestled among the tools was a tin of Prang watercolors. A black metal case with eight basic colors and a brush.  Those eight colors, and whatever soup we could make by mushing them around, defined the palette we employed in "Art class." If you couldn’t make the “right” color with that limited palette and our even more limited abilities - well, it just wasn’t going to happen. After “Art" we would move on “English” and the dreaded spelling/vocabulary test. The comparison to our Prang watercolors is direct and accurate. Here in “English” we began to construct the linguistic palette with which we were to describe the physical world unfolding around us and the emotional world bubbling within us. And, for the most part, we got the linguistic equivalent of those 8 basic colors.

Now, let us jump ahead 50 or 60 years. According to Google Earth the alley still runs north from my old house, but there is now a State Farm Office where Patton’s used to be.  Prang still sells an 8-color watercolor set, but as we edit our contribution to the roughly 1 billion digital photos uploaded to the Internet daily, or create original works in any digital paint program, the idea of having anything less than "millions of colors" is absurd. We click our cursor over a portion of an image and the ubiquitous color wheel appears, inviting us to select the precise shade we desire from a palette limited only by the resolution of our screens. However if, upon completing the image, we want to move beyond simply sharing it, and tell our friends what we were thinking or feeling, why we composed the image the [way we did, we access our Twitter account or some other text app usually limited to 146 characters and/or spaces. Not words. Characters or spaces.] - that is the number of characters between those brackets that intrude upon the preceding sentences.

Consider for a moment the radical difference between the chromatic palette provided for the most basic visual computer program and the extreme restrictions placed on the texting applications; those applications that keep my students' eyes endlessly affixed to the glass rectangles attached to their palms. With their linguistic options so crippled, is it any wonder that “texters” have reverted to extreme contractions or modern pictograms aka emoticons or emojis? Those unique constructions speak well of texting creativity within severely limited communication spaces. Yet those same linguistic accommodations give me pause concerning the future of the more arcane genres of poetry and prose.

There really is only one way to build a rich, functional, linguistic palette.  You must read. You must read a lot. Novels, biographies, non-fiction works, histories - all of it. Oh, I get a number of “word of the day” emails. I enjoy crossword puzzles. But neither of those linguistic “vitamin pills” empower our own expressive skills. To jump back to the visual palette analogy - words of the day and crossword answers are like color swatches. They provide colors in isolation but say little about composition, about communication.  Similarly films and videos slide swiftly across our consciousness, requiring multiple viewing or a visit to the "quotes from" Internet site to add that awesome bit of repartee to our personal, functional stash of words

So we must read, and be especially thankful for the authors who make that an enriching and enjoyable experience, for ourselves - and for today's "teched-out" children.  I suppose one should be Catholic to nominate someone for Sainthood, But, if permitted, I would like to nominate J.K. Rowling for that, and any other relevant honors. 

It was approaching midnight on the night of July 7th, 2000.  When the clock struck 12 it would be July 8th and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire would be released to the public - all 616 pages of it. I was pretty far back in the line, my lack of costume marking me as a muggle of the first order.  But it was a magical night, so I was less startled than I might have been otherwise to see a copy of the book floating toward me through the hazy southern night.  It was not until the book came to rest a yard or two in front of me that I realized it had feet, and behind the open book was the intense face of a little girl. She seemed not much larger than the book itself. Yet, you could almost see the words being sucked off the page into her enchanted eyes. Thank you, Ms. Rowling.

So writing well, conversing widely, articulating - for ourselves and for others - those thoughts that define us, requires words, lots and lots of words. We also need to practice slapping them up against each other in unique sentences to explore which have natural affinity and which rasp against each other - fingernails on a literary blackboard.

All the images in my coloring book - Color Me Chilled Out - began as doodles, and eventually grew into more complex and colorful works.  Every post here on SchragWall started life as a verbal doodle, an “I wonder .  .  .” moment.  A phrase that eventually acquired more words, longer sentences, analogies of varying clarity, until finally - at long last - I stop and send them winging off to you.   

.

When Belief is Stronger Than Data

.

We live in a world that is now, and has always been, shaped by competing narratives.  Maybe "always has been” is a bit too strong. We really are just guessing about prehistory. If our ancestors left the equivalent of their journals or Facebook pages lying around we haven't figured them out yet.  Some good guesses perhaps, but nothing really solid.  However once writing became the norm - hieroglyphics, cuneiform, and all that - the messages become much clearer, and sadly redundant. Many of the messages chronicle competition and carnage and most often the winner writes the history. 

The competitive narratives that sent our forbearers out upon the field of battle were most often commercial, political or philosophical in nature.  Someone had something, better grazing, access to a port, whatever, that someone else wanted. And, having been absent when their preschool class learned about sharing, they mounted up an army and rode out to take it - blood for treasure. 

While many conflicts were at least in part commercial,  they often were heavily glazed with a political or philosophical or theological patina. The "other" was "bad" and ones own people were "good." The reasons were often a bit foggy, but the result was sadly predictable - the bodies of young men (usually) dead upon the battlefield, and the bodies of civilians dead in the cities. And the victors writing the history. 

Most regrettable - certainly from a long view of history - is the fact that every so often a figure arises that fits the "monster" view of history that is used to justify war.  Hitler can claim that mantle - pure hatred of any "other" outside his narrow view of "one of us." The war to stop the spread of his diseased worldview eventually even drew active opposition from the poster boy of "radical pacifism," Albert Einstein. No doubt others can provide their own names from other times in human history that should appear on that list of "true monsters."  

The problem is that those horrific historical realities are used to justify making war on opponents whose only real transgression is that they wish to possess the same material benefits that we covet, or even more intolerable, they worship in a different manner than do we. 

Do not get me wrong. I am not arguing that the world is free of oppositional groups willing to drag the world into chaos if that is the price of advancing their perception of "truth."  What I do wish to emphasize is that such opposition is the product of a clash of beliefs in which objective data plays little or no role. 

Belief derives from a personal perspective that one is in possession of the truth.  Many faith-based communities draw their beliefs from a particular document - their "good book."  Problematic for life in the 21st century is that none of these dominant works were written in what is now the real world.  Rather they were philosophical works designed to explain a world millennia removed from the one that greets us every day.   

And that is, or at least should be, the shared goal of philosophy, religion and science: To advance our understanding of the present world and clarify the role of humanity in that world.  We cannot, despite the attraction of the perspective, declare existence frozen. I am afraid that the Christian doxology's claim "as it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be," simply flies in the face of the data of the experience of the last two thousand years. Similarly flawed is Islam's assertion that "truth" was finally decreed some 1400 years ago. Pick any ancient and revered text  from any faith and you will often find wonderful insight compromised, if not crippled, by a simple ignorance of the natural world. Yet it is often a work seen as a theological line in the sand beyond which inquiry cannot pass. 

Examine the intellectual position of a modern day fundamentalist - of any of the world's major faiths - and you find a mind willingly submerged in ignorance, shackled to beliefs coined by the best and brightest minds - of thousands of years ago.  Brilliances that struggled to discern the meaning of the universe from data which could penetrate no further than the next town, bolstered by fantastic tales embroidered by merchants who traveled the mysterious trade routes that probed beyond the near horizon. 

Science, philosophy and theology all should seek to create narratives that can lead us to a greater understanding of, and appreciation for, the staggering complexities of the universes.  But for those narratives to be anything other than fairytales they must rest upon everything we know about our universe - know, not simply believe. The sciences, physical and social, lead us to what we know and right up to the very edge of the unknown. Philosophy and theology should explore why what we know is important, and in doing so point science’s quest for what in new and unique directions. 

The problem, of course, is that the edge of the unknown can be a frightening place.  Global warming as a result of human activity? The Zika virus? A world population spiraling beyond our ability to feed all those mouths? An increasing demographic skew between the "haves" and "have nots" that points eventually to revolution and chaos or repressive totalitarianism? No, I'd rather not think about that. I would much prefer that you tell me a story in which I, or at least the group with whom I identify, plays the heroic role. 

And so those in power or seeking power do just that.  The recent American presidential election is only the most recent example of this time-honored chicanery.  The Trump campaign, whether attacking fellow republicans in the primaries or Clinton in the general election, crafted a narrative from xenophobic falsehoods and pseudoscience - alternative facts. It is a narrative in which Trump himself was cast as the only hero who could defend America from the alien hordes gathering on the horizon. Neither his republican opponents in the primaries nor the Clinton campaign could appreciate the impact of such a dark narrative on an American electorate seemingly fearful of its place on the world stage. 

When science works to provide the "what" to philosophy and theology's reflections on the "why," cultural narratives tend to be thoughtful and flexible. Data helps to guide and temper belief.  But when belief dictates what should be true, what science is permitted to address, the cultural narrative becomes a farce. That way lies madness. 

.

Transforming the Vanities

.

[While I think it works as a “stand alone,” this post will make more sense if you are familiar with Richard Adams’s novel Watership Down.  If you haven’t read it, your library should have copies. Printed versions tend to be a bit pricey, but it is a good book for your home library. I found an e-version on Amazon for about $5.00.  As a last resort Wikipedia does a nice “reminder synopsis."  But do give yourself the gift of snuggling down with the book for a nice winter read. It is not always a cozy read, but "all’s well that ends well.”]  RLS

When I heard, this past Christmas Eve, that Richard Adams had died, I promised myself that I would reread Watership Down. I used to show the video in my media criticism class, and upon recalling that it had been a VHS cassette, I realized just how long it had been since I had encountered the narrative.  The work is sometimes classified as juvenile or teen fiction, and often can be found on middle school reading lists. Bad call. I remember that when I wrote Taming the Wild Tube back in 1990 I specifically warned parents that despite being animated and featuring rabbits this is not a video for children! It will give them nightmares. My older daughter, a thirty-something attorney who just gave birth to her own daughter, would still have trouble with it. 

But having just finished the novel again, I am reminded that it is a beautiful, thoughtful, mature work. One is first struck by the grace of Adams' descriptive prose. It is painterly. Layer of articulate description follows layer after layer until the literary equivalent of a Hudson River School landscape emerges from the pages. Beautiful. 

My previous interactions with the work were pre-chord theory and Distilled Harmony. But it will surprise you not a whit to learn that my recent reading found harmonic resonances leaping from every page.  First, we need to agree that the work is not merely a story about rabbits. Rather it is an allegory, with Hazel, our primary protagonist working his way past a variety of challenges in pursuit of the transcendent harmony advocated by the mythological god character, Frith. 

I’m going to resist the temptation to launch into a “close reading” that would tickle my colleagues with a literary criticism bent - instead I want to play with the idea of what Hazel’s journey has to say about finding our own way to harmony. 

Adams makes it clear that, initially, Hazel seems a strange choice to lead a ragtag band of rabbits across the threatening English countryside in pursuit of a new, safe warren. Hazel is neither the most senior, nor the biggest, strongest rabbit in the band.  Others have prescient, psychic gifts, are better fighters, and are more skilled in rabbit “survival skills.” But Hazel has a unique gift - he senses how to turn flaws into desired attributes. Hazel values the unique characteristics of others and never insists on competing with the notes more obvious in others. Rather, Hazel realizes the value of blending those individual notes into shared harmonies that benefit of the entire warren. 

As I read the work it occurred to me that rather than seeing it only as a study of how individuals can work together harmoniously for the common good, it also encourages us to consider how we might blend our various “selves" together into a more harmonic individual identity. 

It seems the current vogue to assert that we all possess the same suite of abilities.  Just show up and you will get a “certificate of participation.” The reality is that we are better at some things than we are at others.  I had always believed that, given the time and opportunity, I could be a wonderful saxophone player.  So after securing my first full-time, real, tenure-track teaching position I went out and rented a sax and prepared to loose the new “Bird” upon the jazz world. It soon became evident that the best use for my saxophone “Certificate of Participation” would be to use it to gently wrap up the instrument as I returned it to the music store where it might find its way into more “sax-enabled” hands.  As I said, we are better at some things than we are at others. And it is those things at which we are most adept that come to structure and define our identities. 

There is a problem with this relationship between ability and identity. The problem is that the line between identity and vanity is very fuzzy. And the fuzz only gets thicker as our experience, and perhaps our peers, affirm the legitimacy of a particular facet of our identity. The slide into vanity is easy when given a nudge.  And, I suppose, a touch of vanity does no harm. After all self-esteem, a feeling of self-worth, is healthy. However, the link between vanity and identity can be problematic when vanity turns to arrogance.  

Two primary examples from the Watershed Down narrative:

First, rabbits are great storytellers, and throughout the novel Adams uses the stories to acquaint us with the rabbitkind's oral traditions and mythology. In one story we learn that rabbitkind’s precarious place in the world is itself the result of vanity sliding into arrogance.  El-ahrairah [In rabbit mythology El-ahrairah is the Prince of Rabbits] is forever bragging about the fecundity of “his people.” Lord Frith requests that El-ahrairah rein in the unchecked spread of rabbitkind. El-ahrairah responds with his usual “my people are the best in all the world” mantra. This arrogance angers Frith and causes Frith to divide the previously congenial animal kingdom into competing groups. Under this edict many animals become predators - “Elil” in lapine - leaving rabbits as prey who must be continually on guard, able to survive in this newly dangerous world only by cunning and speed. 

And then there is General Woundwort. Woundwort is the Chief Rabbit of Efrafa, a totalitarian warren that our protagonists encounter in their wanderings, and from whom the Watershed Down rabbits eventually steal the does needed to ensure the future of their warren.  Woundwort’s vanity regarding the invincibility of his prerogatives as Chief Rabbit and his own physical strength, makes this violation of Efrafa intolerable. So Woundwort leads a retaliatory raid on the Watership Down warren.  Hazel conceives a plan that leads the vicious dog from a nearby farm up the hill to the Watership Down warren just in time to catch Woundwort's warriors exposed above ground.  Those who are not killed, flee - except for Woundwort whose vanity cum arrogance drives him to fling himself at the dog hollering “Dogs aren’t dangerous!”  While his body is never found it would appear that Woundwort chose "death by Elil" - a voluntary, terminal confrontation with a lethal predator - in preference to any further damage to his arrogant self image. 

Hazel is the opposite of arrogance.  His leadership hinges on his ability to transform potentially negative vanity into skills that serve the group, while simultaneously freeing the individual from the constricting bonds of vanity.  It was this last part that struck me most in this recent reading of the work. How do we free ourselves from the constricting bonds of vanity? 

We live in a competitive world.  We may choose to believe that “certificates of participation” make everyone feel warm and fuzzy. That is, I am afraid, an illusion. As a young competitive swimmer, one of my daughters became intrigued with having at least one of each color of the ribbons awarded after each race. Competition, and her own evolving abilities, allowed her to collect every color but black - the ribbon awarded to sixth, and in the confines our pool, last place. She simply could not allow herself to intentionally lose in order to collect her missing black ribbon. Despite our attempts to “level the playing field,” our children quickly come to realize that they are “differently abled.”  

I continue to believe that that is a good thing. I like it that my oncologist seems to be at the very top of his field. I am simply unable to fix my car and so am pleased that others have that ability. I am delighted that university hires people far more competent than I to untangle the increasingly complex relationships among the various pieces of technology that enable my everyday activities.  On the other hand I would be loathe to let any of those folks edit these essays 😃  

Is that vanity? I don’t really know. I know it is not yet arrogance as I am quite able to read the works of others - like Watership Down - and be amazed to the tune of “I could never do that!”  So maybe a healthy perspective is to attempt to examine those abilities we do possess that may be inclined toward vanity - and the slippery slope to arrogance -  and assess not why this makes us better than those around us, but rather to reflect on how we might both improve the ability and use it to benefit the whole warren. How we can, like Hazel, transform vanity into a truly worthy ability. 

.

Everything's a Waltz

.

After the champagne has gone flat, the beginning of the year can be a trying time, especially in this world of digital processing and the Internet of things. After last year's flurry of massive hacks, a number of entities are asking us to change passwords or add an additional level of security with multiple passwords. My students have to log onto new course sites often encountering a "new normal" mandated by software "updates." Same with your "smarter than you are" phone. A visit to the doctor or your pharmacy often requires a new insurance card and a strong suggestion that you "go paperless" and conduct your business online. Ditto your bank. In short, the stress can be a bit overwhelming.  

This is where you think I am going to direct you to my coloring book and suggest you set aside time each day to color, meditate and relax. And that is an excellent idea, but it isn't where I am headed right now.  Rather I am thinking about a particular country song - or more accurately what we used to call a "country western” song.

No, I am not thinking of the “perfect country western” addition to You Never Even Call Me by My Name that Steve Goodman added for David Allen Coe so he could sing the perfect country western song. That additional piece goes like this:

"Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison

And I went to pick her up in the rain

But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck

She got runned over by a damned old train”

Good for a giggle perhaps we admit as we smugly acknowledge that we really don’t listen to David Allen Coe very often - or country music for that matter.  Well, if you don’t you are missing some delightfully insightful poetry. And remember Dylan just won the Nobel Prize for Literature - something that no doubt has my parent’s generation spinning in their graves.  The lyric I am referring to is from an infectious little song [co-written with wife Patsy and Ron Peterson] that Ed Bruce sang called When You Fall in Love Everything’s A Waltz.  It opens like this:

"We don't dance the two-step anymore

All we need's a small part of the floor

The band can go on playin' almost anything it wants

When you fall in love everything's a waltz"

And here is the “easing into the New Year” part.  The notion is that your emotional state can transform everything around you.  So when you start running into all those “starting the year” hassles enumerated above, do everything you can to actually talk to a human being about your concerns, and make the conversation a waltz.  Remember, these folks are people who deal with complaints all day long. They are accustomed to people hollering at them.  Don’t be one of those people.  

When they say “How can I help you?” or just even “Hello.” Answer in three-quarter time: “Boy, I hope you can help me. I think I may have done something wrong.” That already disarms them as they are used to people assuming thatthey have not only done something wrong, but have done so with malicious intent.  I find they often respond to a waltz opening with something like, “Well, let’s see what is going on,” and then go out of their way to help you. 

Continue the conversation in waltz time, remembering that this is the person who can help you. Truth is I doubt that the person who answers complaints to pay the bills rarely sees that job as defining themselves. More likely there is a wannabe poet, musician, novelist, or struggling single parent on the other end of the line.  Inviting them to waltz through your problem may not only solve your problem, but puts a little waltz into their day as well.

.

The Illuminated Dark Ages, or The Day the Internet Died

.

It wasn’t even the “major cathedral” there in Regensburg.  That would be St. Peters, a structure along the classic gothic lines of St. Stephens in Vienna.  This was St. Emmeram, a 13th century Abbey.  We had opted to take the afternoon as “free time” to wander around and explore the truly delightful Christmas Market that wrapped around the Abbey - far the best market of the cruise.  My boyhood favorite Kristkindle Mart in Vienna had sadly gone the way of county fairs.  I mean, cotton candy and Disney figures? Really. But that is another story. 

Back to St. Emmeram - which is now more widely known as the Castle of Thurn and Taxis as the result of a Medieval Cathedral Naming Rights Deal in the 1500s. From the outside it looked, well, very "13th centuryish.”  We came in what turned out to be a side door, rough plaster covered the outside corridor which held a wide variety of carved plaques filled with Latin. We stepped inside - the only two people in a staggeringly beautiful, breath-taking space.  Arches swept up - and I try not to exaggerate - fifty feet to ornately frescoed ceilings. The alter which seemed miles away - okay, so I do exaggerate - glittered like a fairy tale treasure trove. But no dragon stood guard over this golden hoard. Rather we walked past a host of saintly statutes, each seeming more elaborate than the one before. Golden gild and brilliant colors enveloped us. There was no haze of incense or murmured Latin liturgy - but it didn’t take much imagination to supply them both.  

It wasn’t long until some other 21st century souls invaded our private audience, so we tiptoed out, heading for the equally delightful but far more prosaic indulgences of the Gulgwein and cosy open fires of the Christmas market. 

Later that night I was reading up on St. Emmeram’s Abbey and learned that among the highlights of its long history was the fact that it was the site of the first Mass ever conducted in German. Fresh on the heels of our visit to St. Emmeram’s, that little factoid made me realize anew that for centuries the Catholic church was a purely visual experience for all but the priestly class versed in Latin. For everyone else in the community, God was virtual reality experience. The priest would tell the faithful Bible stories, walking amidst lavishly illustrated artistic wonders like those that adorned St. Emmeram’s.  And what did God sound like? Well, like Latin, of course. 

That is until that first German mass, right there in the abbey of St. Emmeram.  Suddenly  "God's words" were intelligible to people other than the priests. And when words can be understood, people will create questions.  I don’t know exactly how many years transpired between that first German mass and Martin Luther’s impertinent accusations at the Diet of Worms in 1517, but the road between Regensburg and Worms is a direct path. 

And what, you may well ask, does that have to do with the “death of the Internet?” 

Well, you sort of have to work with me here.  Prior to the "vernacular articulation” of the Catholic liturgy, faith for that community was a tangible, visual reality.  Faith was made real in places like St. Emmeram’s Abbey. With the coming of religious texts that were accessible to all literate individuals, questions, even doubt, invaded that formerly inviolate sphere.  It is important to note that Christendom did not die off with the coming of the vernacular liturgies and Bibles.  The Catholic Church flourished alongside upstarts like Luther’s new reading of faith.  But the church changed - radically.  That huge community of “the faithful” now spans a spectrum ranging from ultra-conservative evangelicals through Catholic and Protestant traditionalists to very flexible Unitarians. But that innocent trust reflected in the purity of the Abbey of St. Emmeram has, if not vanished, been significantly reduced. 

It would seem an equal display of naivety to still consider the Internet an “information superhighway.”  When Brin and Page set out to “organize” all human information, there was an implied purity to the undertaking.  Google’s first mantra “Don’t be evil,” now rings with the simplicity of a fairy tale. If there is a single notion that remains solid throughout the study of human communication it is that information equals power. And an equally consistent corollary is that a major portion of that power derives from the ability to define truth and reality.  

The first Obama election revealed to America, and its politicos and pundits, that the Internet was a powerful tool for shaping and driving political action. The controversies surrounding the recent Trump election reveals that it is an equally powerful tool for shaping the body politic’s perception of reality. Last December an armed young man from my home state of North Carolina barged into a Washington pizzeria because he had read a “news story” on the Internet that Hillary Clinton was running a child slavery/pedophile ring out of the establishment. Facebook currently finds itself embroiled in a controversy driven by its seemingly lackadaisical approach to allowing such “fake news stories” to be posted on its site - a site that, were it a country, would be the 2nd largest country in the world. And a site that, along with other corporately and politically motivated Internet entities, is increasingly influencing our perception of reality and our definition of truth. 

And that is what I mean by the day the Internet died.  When the fictional illuminations of "seemingly real" events distributed over the Internet overwhelm scientific and social scientific evidence in the competition to define "reality," the Internet, as originally conceived of as an objective repository of humanitity's accumulated knowledge, died. 

Obviously, the Internet is not going away.  If anything our dependence on interconnected digital technologies will increase.  What needs to change is our perception of “it.”    First, we must abandon the St. Emmeram-like notion of some type of "pure truth" out there on the “Internet.” There simply is no singular entity that is "the Internet." Rather there are innumerable entities creating their version of the truth, of reality, each seeking to win us to their banner.  And they have tools at their disposal that make St. Emmeram’s Abbey look like tinker toys.  Two related items: 

Item 1: I was standing in the check-out line at Michael’s Art Supply store yesterday and I noticed, hanging there by the now ubiquitous memory sticks and phone chargers, Virtual Reality viewers.  True they were versions of the old Google cardboard viewers. But at $3.75 a pop they provide, in conjunction with most smartphones,  a nifty realistic experience of limited content. 

Item 2: I read earlier today that United Airlines is going to provide Virtual Reality viewers - the real deal immersive type stuff - to travelers in their Business Class waiting lounges. No, I don’t know what they would be watching. Maybe travel videos of their destination which would have been relayed to the VR device via their phones. I dunno. 

Remembering that “the Internet” is simply a massive collection of vested interests seeking to define reality for target audiences, Virtual Reality brings a whole new dimension - or perhaps three or four of them - to the game. If “virtual reality” becomes a normal adjunct to “old-fashioned reality” how do we know which is which? As Charlie Brown would say, “Arrrrrrrgggh!” 

But before you look around for high places off of which to fling yourself, let me perhaps surprise you by saying, “Wait. This is not all bad news.” As a matter of fact it could be great news.  Think about it.  What happened when those folks back in St. Emmeram’s heard the mass in German?  Right. They had to think about it. They began to consider alternative interpretations. They began to take an active role in the construction of their reality, in their notion of faith and truth.  As we begin to realize the ease with which technology allows any group to portray a particular notion of reality, we must become evermore curious as to “what’s in for them?”  Increasingly the internet is the only game in town when it comes to presenting “truth” or “reality” to large numbers of people.  And while, yes, that does create unparalleled opportunities for hucksters and haters, it provides the same opportunities for what I still believe is the majority of people around us -  people with a shared desire to create a better, kinder, more harmonic world. 

There is a great old movie from 1969 - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - which, thanks to "the Internet,” you can watch whenever you want.  There is a scene in which Butch and the Kid have used every trick they know to dodge a pursuing posse.  Looking back over the wasteland they have just traversed, they see the telltale dust cloud of the pursuing posse. Butch turns to the Kid and says: “Who are those guys!?” 

That, more than anything else, needs to be our guiding light as we consider the seemingly limitless number of alternative realities presented to us by the evolving digital world: Who are those guys? What’s in it for them, and how does that mesh with the world I believe in and wish to help create? To whom do I attend, and who do I ignore? We may never return to the simple world of St. Emmeram, but if we learn to become thoughtful, critical consumers of today's “Internet" we may actually find our way to a better world for all.

. 

High in the Mist Above Quail Ridge

.

When left alone with the television remote I do not, despite my wife's suspicions, head over to ESPN and watch 300 pound men mindlessly pound each other in pursuit of touchdowns, concussions, and eventual mindlessness. That was my father's inclination. He could find, not only interest in any obscure athletic contest, but a reason to fervently root for one of the two contenders, neither of whom he had ever heard of. 

I, rather, search out nature documentaries hoping to hear the echo of Jacque Cousteau: "Here hidden within the mysterious depths . . ." or some modern pretender's hushed whisper, "Our trail camera has caught the first glimpse in 50 years of this creature, long given up as extinct. . ." 

It was with that same feeling of the naturalist’s cautious anticipation that I entered Quail Ridge Books yesterday.  Our local, yet nationally renowned, bookstore has a storied history in its own right.  In 2001, its longtime owner, Nancy Olson, was named national bookseller of the year by Publisher’s Weekly.  She had often graciously consented to visiting my classes over the years to talk about how “her little store” was able to routinely out hustle and out sell the boys in the big box stores. She looked like your grandmother and was a business genius. Nancy passed away in March of this year, and the store moved from its cosy quarters on Ridge Road to fancier digs in an upscale Mall. This was my first visit to the new location. I was skittish. 

Snugged under my arm was a copy of Color Me Chilled Out.  My objective was to snag somebody in purchasing and do my spiel to have them carry the book.  Color Me seems to be doing quite well online, Amazon runs out and orders more copies fairly consistently.  But my publisher seems to feel that marketing is, in this new digital age, primarily the author’s responsibility.  I glanced around, hoping to see Nancy’s ghost to offer me guidance - “Bob! How good to see you! What can I do for you?”  Sadly there were no spirits, spiritual or liquid, to ease the way.  I recognized many of the staff, but realized that they did not recognize me.  I felt a sudden compassion for my students who approach me smiling in recognition: "Hi Dr. Schrag!  I took your class two years ago!”  "Along with a couple thousand other folks," is the response from which I refrain. “Well, hello!” I say instead. 

The person at the counter is equally, but just a shade impersonally, polite: “Can I help you?” I tell her what I am after and she hustles off to return with a manager whom I do not recognize.  I make my pitch, and she smiles and asks if I have looked at the “instructions for authors” on their website.  “Of course,” I lie smoothly. “But I’ve always thought of Quail Ridge as ‘my bookstore’ so I thought I would bring a copy by.” I hand her an “author signed" copy. She smiles and says, “Well, I’ll get this into the right hands.” and scurries away. 

I skulk back into the mystery section. Peering about for any new offerings, hiding my Kindle under my coat as you hide your coffee from home when you pop in to steal some extra Splenda from Starbucks. A hand touches my arm. Busted! But, no, it is the manager. “Sir, we already carry this book,” she says, handing me back my "author signed" copy. “You’ll find it over in the adult coloring book section.” And off she goes. 

I feel light-headed. “Color Me Chilled Out” is on the shelf! It exists in the wilds of a brick and mortar book store! My brick-and-mortar bookstore! Without my even asking! Right there alongside literary giants! Maybe sharing bon motes with Billy Collins and Tennessee Williams. I casually make my way over towards my quarry. Careful not to startle it into flight. I pause before the coloring books. Apparently Dr Seuss’s estate has come out with a new coloring book - many copies. But, hey, that’s not bad company.  And then, there it is. And I hear Cousteau, “Here, gliding almost shyly among its glittering cousins of the reef, is the even more beautiful 'Color Me Chilled Out' .  .  ." 

Well, he might have said that .  .  .   

.

Changing Holiday Shopping

Calm

Peaceful

Serene

Not words we usually associate with holiday shopping, but

Color Me Chilled Out
can change that perception.

Color Me Chilled Out: Coloring Pages for Meditation and Relaxation by Robert Schrag is a coloring book for adults designed specifically to get us to those calm, peaceful and serene places in our mind that we associate with the holidays, but which seem to get driven out by the relentless commercialization that swiftly changes “Happy Holidays!” into “Bah! Humbug!”

Dr. Schrag has spent 40+ years teaching about visual and verbal messages in the Department of Communication at North Carolina State University.  But he has spent 60+ years doodling and coloring and writing poetry!  In his words:

“Doodling and coloring are visual poetry.  I am thrilled that adults are finally reclaiming these visual delights that we usually leave in the hands of children.  Their importance became even clearer to me while recovering from chemo and my stem cell transplants.  Coloring became an island of calm purpose in those otherwise trying times.”

Color Me Chilled Out is Dr. Schrag’s effort to share that “island of calm purpose” with us at all times, but particularly during these hectic holidays.  And apparently it is working. 

With nothing but word-of-mouth publicity, Color Me Chilled Out sold more than 7,000 copies during the first month it was available.  Among the reviews from the book’s pleased audience is this one from Amazon:

“Imagine Peter Max and M.C. Escher locked in a room and ordered to collaborate on 50 or so drawings. That's what you'll find here!”

You can purchase the book without ever seeing a parking garage. Simply search for Color Me Chilled Out at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or also at the publisher’s site, northlightshop.com. Reviews are most welcome!

If you would like to encourage your local bookstore or art supply store to carry Color Me Chilled Out, have them call F&W Publishing customer service trade division at 1-800-289-0963.

A False Dichotomy

.

Halloween is looming. Orange and black is the new black. Strange creatures populate every commercial cranny. And people who are old enough to know better are asking themselves, “What will I be for Halloween?” I assume that come the 31st, the Undead will figure prominently in a variety of displays.  They are very hot media properties despite their questionable existence in the real world.

The history of Halloween gets spun differently depending on who is doing the spinning. A few minutes on the Internet can take you from Halloween as a time to place flowers on the graves of your ancestors to honor their memory, to Halloween as the time when the denizens of the underworld can clamber up into the “real world” and walk among us - often with evil intent. "Be afraid! Be very afraid!”  It is this latter view that favors the frolicking Undead. And, unfortunately, it is the one that intrudes upon my thoughts these days.

You see, public displays of fear have been troubling my university over the last week or so.  It started with a couple of overtly racist GroupMe posts between NC State students being captured with screen shots.  The captured posts went viral, necessitating a response by the Chancellor, resulting in a great deal of public angst throughout both town and gown.  As you know, if you have been attending to this blog over the last decade or so, racism stands in direct opposition to the four tenets of Distilled Harmony [www.distilledharmony.com], so there is no question that I find the content of the posts abhorrent.  However, having spent about 41 years teaching college, I am equally committed to the idea that college campuses are exactly the places where competing ideas must collide.  Popular speech, happy speech, conformist speech needs no protection.  It is unpopular speech, revisionist speech, minority speech, and yes, stupid speech, that needs protection. It is only in an environment that protects such speech that all ideas can be contested.

Other colleagues will argue that the posts are "hate speech" and hence give up their right to protected status.  I will leave that to the lawyers.  I will however suggest that what we often label hate speech isn’t really hate speech. It is fear speech. Let me explain.

The first tenet of Distilled Harmony is to Foster Harmony.  That demands that - in order to live a harmonic life - we must examine the existential tension between areas of harmony and areas of discord and subsequently champion harmony. E.g., kindness is harmonic, cruelty is discordant. Hence if we seek to live a harmonic life, to Foster Harmony in our existence, we need to privilege kindness over cruelty.  Hate speech would seem to privilege hate over love. But to cast love and hate as polar opposites misses, I think, the true areas of opposition.  The more accurate poles of opposition are love and fear.  Think about it for a moment.  If you have a “pocket of hate” hidden in your psyche somewhere, peek in there for a moment.

Do you really “hate” those people, or do you fear what your world will look like if “those people” and “their language,” “their religion,” “their culture,” whatever, come to dominate your day-to-day life?  Or do you fear them because “they” and “their language,” “their religion,” “their culture” whatever, already seem to dominate your day-to-day life? Regardless of which end of the telescope you look through, it is a tube of fear; and Internet trolling, bullying, hate speech and hate crimes are the behavioral manifestations of that deeper entity: fear.  

So how do we Foster Harmony in this particular arena? By addressing fear, which is the root cause of hate. And fear is itself usually the result of ignorance. Entities who peer at each other across a fence of fear are also separated by a gulf of ignorance.  As neither has ever truly lived life inside the other’s skin, each is largely clueless regarding the reality of the life lived by the other.  It is this confluence of ignorance and fear that drives hate.

There are policies, programs and courses that my institution has implemented to confront this nefarious confluence. There are those among my colleagues who say “Too little! Too late!”  To whom I respond, “So, go, do. If you do not wish to follow, then lead.”  Personally, I have come to the conclusion that while programs, policies and courses are worthy undertakings to confront the ignorance that drives fear, the route to finally defeat fear and hate is a personal path.  And, for me, that path is marked by the four road signs of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm.

So what am I going to be for Halloween? I dunno. Clowns are apparently out - victims of their "creepy" kin. Maybe we’ll just snuggle down in the basement and watch George C. Scott’s version of A Christmas Carol.  I thought I saw a wreath at the grocery store yesterday .  .  .   

.

Entanglement

.

Einstein, famously and disdainfully, declared quantum entanglement to be "spooky action at a distance,” and refused to accept the idea throughout his life. It is easy to understand his discomfort. Basically “entanglement" asserts that two entangled particles will demonstrate instantaneous reactions when only one of the pair is stimulated. Not a huge conceptual problem if the particles happen to live close to one another. But entanglement further asserts that distance is irrelevant, that entangled particles can be light years apart and will still demonstrate these instantaneous and simultaneous reactions when either one of the particles is stimulated.

Suddenly some fundamental beliefs about the nature of the universe get trashed like the leftovers at a demolition derby. Primary among the wrecks is the idea that nothing can exceed the speed of light. Yet, if two particles separated by light years can react simultaneously and instantaneously to a stimulus applied to only one particle, some type of information passed between the particles at a speed that makes the old speed of light seem positively pedestrian.

I suppose that should surprise us, but then again we need to remember that some 94% of the universe remains invisible to us. Hence, our ideas of “normal” come from often fuzzy observations of the 5 or 6% of “reality” that we can see. So the idea that such linked, instantaneous, communication might be commonplace in the wider “dark” universe becomes plausible and intriguing, to say the least. Among the related questions that occur to me are:

Is there a particle that is the enactor of entanglement? A “tangletron?" Or a field consisting of some kind of tangling bosons that enables instantaneous communication throughout the universe? And if it is there, why is it there and what manner of communication does it enable? And then the one that most fascinates me: Do we already participate in entangled experiences without realizing the mechanism? 

Consider this:

It is not uncommon for partners in the first bloom of a romantic relationship to assert that they were lovers in a former life, that they are soulmates, etc., etc.  While such declarations may well crash and burn in the long run, there is no denying the power of the initial attraction, nor the mysterious power that sustains some relationships for a lifetime.  Listen to any love song, read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 - the “love is not love” one. We are seemingly in love with love. Underlying Distilled Harmony [www.distilledharmony.com] is the idea that harmony is the natural state of existence, that there is a universal harmony, "The God Chord,” -  that I discussed in my book by the same name.  There is a universal chord, a transcendent state to which we can all aspire and eventually obtain. Perhaps romantic love is among the most common human manifestations of an entangled interaction with the God Chord. Being able to somehow sense the location or presence of the other, being able to predict the behavior of the other, finishing each other’s sentences. Might these not be evidence of entangled interactions?

And, to return briefly to the recent posts on expressionist memory, it seems to me quite feasible that the palette of expressionist memories is drawn from various entangled interactions - from those strong notes in our own chord that are entangled with the notes of universal harmony.  Which also addresses the expressionist memory notion of discarding the negative components of memories while retaining and nurturing the harmonic portions of the same experiences.  We retain harmony, we discard discord.

I am further inclined to consider that this “spooky action at a distance” touches all experience, not only human interactions. Art, music, nature, science, philosophy, physical activity - all these fields have language that points to these indescribable moments of perceived harmony: In the zone. In the groove. Feeling it. And, yes, transcendent.  We arrive somewhere we have never been before and feel “at home.” We listen to a piece of music and lose touch with our immediate surroundings, returning only when the music stops and we find ourselves deposited back in a more mundane “reality.” Standing before a painting we are transported to the world within the frame.

There are certainly more prosaic explanations for these phenomena. More pragmatic explanations drawn from our direct experiences in that small portion of the universe we can most easily observe. I would suggest, however, allowing ourselves to consider that entangled experience may be the universal norm beyond our little bubble of light, and that that norm - entanglement - moves easily, if invisibly, around and through us, weaving wonderful ties to the rest of existence.

We need to leave ourselves open to these entanglements - with individuals, with art, with science, with music and with nature; for it is through these entanglements that we blend the notes of our own chord with the notes of The God Chord.

.

Kites of Darkness

.

A coronet of consciousness 

Circles the two o'clock hour. 

Born aloft by kites of darkness  

Drifting on a tether between  

Sunset and first dawn. 

Impervious to the hours past 

Since slumber's onset 

Or morning's impending obligations. 

Driven perhaps by blinking numerals 

It nudges my eyelids open 

And requires an auditory sweep 

Of the immediate environs. 

Born more of curiosity than concern, 

It resolves the darker pools of shadow  

And blinking points of light 

Into the expected dips and edges 

Of what should surround me. 

And sleep becomes an option. 

Unless the wail of a train 

Or the drumming of rain 

Demands further attention. 

.

A Short[er] Footnote on Expressionist Memory

.

I know, I know - “Surely he has beaten this idea to death!”  But not quite.

It strikes me that I might have left you with the idea that expressionist memory is a naturally occurring phenomenon.  That is only partially true.  Memory is a naturally occurring phenomenon - expressionist memory requires some work on our part.  In this way it is similar to lucid dreaming. Dreaming seems to be a naturally occurring phenomenon - normally, we dream whether we choose to dream or not. Lucid dreaming builds on that phenomenon. Wikipedia asserts that "A lucid dream is any dream during which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. During lucid dreaming, the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment.” [http://bit.ly/2bKt37K].  We also exert a degree of control in the construction of expressionist memories. 

Expressionist memories are central to our construction of the beliefs that define reality. Hence they need to be consistent with our beliefs regarding the nature of existence. For me, that means my expressionist memories must be consistent with the four basic tenets of Distilled Harmony [www.distilledharmony.com]: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm.  So my expressionist memories form in part by discarding those portions of hyperthymesiatic recall that are conflict with those tenets of Distilled Harmony. 

Yes, I realize that implies an intentional distortion of “the reality experienced.” But what kind of memory doesn’t do that? Yes, hyperthymesiatic memory that traps one in a freeze frame high definition of what “really” happened. And is also often seen as an abnormal characteristic, if not a condition bordering on a disease.  More normal memories fade over time, leaving the peaks and valleys. In constructing intentional expressionist memories I seek to hold to the peaks, discarding the valleys.

But here is an important distinction - I said discarding the valleys, not repressing them.  John’s [14:2] assertion that we live in a reality with many mansions, is only one of many admissions across belief systems, philosophies and scientific schemes that asserts that we are inclined to compartmentalize our lives. One of the drawings in my coloring book [http://amzn.to/2bQdhFw] started out as a sort of Route 66 old motel, but then got hijacked by a herd of rogue eggplants. OK, strange, but the idea of bits of life poised behind many different doors remains: 

That complexity is just fine - it is what makes us human, interesting, complex.  But if we repress the valleys of recalled experiences, we are merely hiding them away in a room we ignore. They can fester there, eventually rotting the foundations of our reality to such an extent that the whole thing can come crashing down around our ears, landing us in a padded room, or on a very expensive couch in a office with potted plants and soft music.

Discarding is a conscious act of elimination.  It is not so much a “Get away! Get away! Get in that room!” Slam. Now I walk away leaving you locked up in there” scenario, as it is a “Been there, done that. Let me show you the door. Good byeeeeeeeeee!” kind of thing.

To go back to the expressionist painting analogy - which is after all, where I stole the whole idea of expressionist memory - expressionist memories are the palettes from which we paint our lives. We choose the dominant hues of that composition.  I choose calm and pleasing colors.

.