The Provenance of Genius, or They Broke the Mold When They Made That One!

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It is an old expression that has hung around because it captures a feeling so nicely. Yet the precise feeling remains illusive, along the lines of “I don’t know what  “it” means (supply your own ‘it’), but I know it when I see it!”

I found myself thinking about the idea of an undefinable “it” the other day while reading an amusing story about a lovely snafu at the US Postal service. Seems that the recently released “forever” stamp bears the likeness not of the iconic lady who welcomes, hopefully not sarcastically, the tired, poor and huddled masses to America, but rather of her imitation who welcomes tourists to the Las Vegas strip. A little “oops” that cost the USPS 3.5 million in royalties to the creator of the Vegas version.

But it did get me thinking about the seemingly shrinking distance between the “real thing” and imitations. It is a distance that has all but disappeared in the spooky land of the digital - where there is, in theory, no difference at all between a digital “original” and the millionth “copy” derived from the same digital code.

I wonder, and indeed hope, that we have gotten this one wrong.  I choose to believe, that even in the creepy valley of the digital clones there is still an original “mold” created by a genius that, when broken, leaves behind an “original,” ineffably different from all the seemingly identical copies that may follow.

I remember being face-to-face with our old friend Michelangelo’s David in Florence. Well, not literally. He is much taller than I, and his face - and everything else - is much bigger. But it was definitely one of those “I can’t define art, but I know it when I see it!” moments. There is a presence in his presence that is able to transcend even the prattle of parents who somehow feel it is important that their infant child see the David. And who knows, maybe the baby brain is somehow attuned to that mysterious presence.

But then, eventually, you find your way to the gift shop, and there row after row of Davids greet you in varying sizes and finishes. And that is when I wonder about the relationship between those mini-Davids and the big guy down the hall. I mean, in this instance the difference is obvious - in size and the medium if nothing else. But what about the difference between any two of the seemingly identical Davids on the shelves? Those made from the same mold and shipped to shops all over Florence? Around the world? Would there be a difference between a poster made from a photo of the real David, and a seemingly identical poster made from a photo of one of the mini-Davids? Especially if both posters were digital prints?

I choose to believe that there is a difference. And, no, I have no data to support my belief, other than my firm conviction that every element in existence is reducible to its essential chord composed of an absolutely unique cluster of strings - those indivisible units from which all other matter is constructed. I do not deny that digital and genetic clones appear identical - but the reality is “not really real.” 

Consider the simple examples of the “corrupted” computer files that need to be downloaded repeatedly before they will perform in a manner “identical” to the original. Or consider the uncertain relationships that exist between the “same” image on your smartphone, laptop, desktop, or printer output. One can argue that the “source code” for all those images is identical and the variation in the images is the result of improper calibration in the presenting technology - laptop, printer, whatever. But does not the notion of “identical copy” imply an ability to present to an audience of one - you or me, or someone else, or more - all your “friends” - multiple identical copies?

As usual, I need to approach my discomfort with this assertion with an analogy, or more accurately, a story - true story. When my younger daughter was little, two realities clashed. The first was that she was subject to rather serious allergies and related attacks of asthma. The second was that she, like many kiddos that age, had a special stuffed animal. Her’s was a white bunny, big floppy ears, pink satin inserts - AKA Bunny.

One day her allergies and asthma sent her to the hospital. I remember pulling night duty in her room, faux sleeping in her room, while actually anxiously listening to her every breath as various machines whirred and the chaos of a hospital made any real sleep a fantasy. Morning brought a return to normalcy for us all, and our preparations to return home. It was then that we discovered that Bunny was missing. We never found Bunny. To this day I have no idea what happened to Bunny. My inclination was to blame the hospital staff. Bunny tangled in hundreds of sheets sent to the laundry. Or Bunny snatched by a psychotic stuffed-animal thief who roamed the pediatrics ward. I still do not know where Bunny went. But I do know some things about Bunny.

First, I know that at that time nowhere on the Internet or in brick and mortar stores was there a stuffed animal that duplicated Bunny.  Maybe now, some twenty years later, search engines and social media might have evolved to the point where I could find a Bunny clone.  But not then.  Second, I know that despite the fact that my daughter eventually moved beyond Bunny, initially, none of the seemingly similar Bunny substitutes ever approached the original.

We have, of course, moved far beyond my search for Bunny. Today folks seem willing to go to truly incomprehensible lengths to replace the irreplaceable. If we are willing to try to clone our pets - google it, truly  creepy - can trying to clone our children, partners - ourselves, be far behind? It would remain a sci-fi fantasy if we could just realize that the essential chord that truly defines all existence - from Michelangelo to Rover to the original David - is absolutely unique; lies beyond duplication.

As I point out in The God Chord, our chord, built of the vibrating strings replicated in their billions throughout every cell in our body, evolves constantly. I suppose our hubris and technology might one day simultaneously evolve to the point that would allow us to “grab a chord of the instant.” But, as in the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, it seems highly likely that any entity associated with that captured chord would evolve in its own unique path, unassociated with the entity from whom the chord had been snatched.

Let me try to summarize the assumptions contained within this strange ramble, which was even longer and more tortured in its creation, than in your reading of it.

First, the “originality" of creations of genius resides more in process than in product. The original is deeply imbued with the chord of its creator, at a level we still cannot measure or observe. Hence we cannot begin to replicate that original - digitally or otherwise. So after that original creative marriage of process and product, the mold is broken, never to be truly duplicated.

Second, the further from the creation of original - time, medium, method -  the unique chord of the copy becomes an ever fainter version of the original chord. Consider numbered prints— say 1/50. Why is 1 of 50 still seen as “better” than 25 of 50?  Here the notion of the digital clone does challenge the common production assertions that as the plates wear out the edges of the etching become less distinct, hence making the lower numbered prints “better.” However, Distilled Harmony would assert that later copies of the original - even digital copies - are further removed from the creation of the original work and hence contain ever fainter versions of the original chord. And that assertion reaffirms the greater the harmonic value of earlier, lower numbered, copies.

Finally, somehow we would know the difference. Maybe we need to think about the idea of a diminished chord, as implied above. A friend of mine used to write the classical music reviews for the local paper. In the last few years of her life CDs were just coming into prominence. She refused to use them to inform her reviews. I do not know if she knew that the process of digital recording deletes some of the auditory signal present in analog recording. After all the amount of signal lost in a digital recording is supposed to be “undetectable” to the human ear. But she could tell that something was missing.  And in this instance what she was hearing was that increased distance from the original performance that caused the original chord to grow fainter, to diminish.

In that instance the fading of the chord was literal in a musical sense. But Distilled Harmony asserts that whether it is David, or Mozart, or perhaps even Bunny, there is a difference between the original work popped out of that first mold, and the copies that follow. The process of genius creates the chord captured in the original work; subsequent copies attempt to replicate the original. It is an effort doomed to a certain degree of failure. But we should remember the value of those failures, for without them we would be denied even the echo of the original.

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When the Arrow of Time Flies Backwards

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If you got Einstein and Aristotle together for a little time traveling tête-à-tête the one thing they probably would agree on would be time. They would both assert that the arrow of time flies forward. Aristotle would be on solid ground given the state of theoretical physics circa 300 BCE. Einstein, not so much so. After all he was the guy who turned time into a variable in an equation that could be flipped back and forth over the equal sign like a spirited rally at Wimbledon. But when push came to shove, match point, and all that, Albert might be forced to admit that there was nothing that would, mathematically, prevent time from running backwards. The fly in that intriguing ointment is that we have never been able to catch time pulling off that, theoretically possible, maneuver. In the wild, in the lab, despite the best efforts of the men in black and women in white, time seems to continue to trudge doggedly down its oneway street.

Until this past week. Now, before I share this seemingly remarkable event with you, I do need to clarify some definitions. "Ah, yes, what is ‘time' Grasshopper?’" No, but seriously, if we want to look for something frolicking forward and backward, we ought to have some sort of operational definition of what this critter “time” looks like. We have moved from “sand through the hour glass,” and shifting shadows on a sun dial, to marks on a candle, to springs unwinding, pendulums swinging, and now to, I believe, the decay of ytterbium atoms to mark the passage of time. The the problem I see here is that all these gizmos are one way devices. It is like plotting traffic in a town with only oneway streets and in cars with no reverse gears. In such an exercise it would be easy to come to the conclusion that traffic could only move forward.  We seem to have put our trust in measurement devices that can only measure “time as we know it” and then declared that time can only follow the path those devices have been designed to measure - flee forward you arrow of time! Seems a little pointed-headed to me.

So let us take a slightly different approach to the definition of time. And here I am going to engage in one of my favorite activities - making stuff up.  We are all familiar with DNA  - deoxyribonucleic acid, and RNA - ribonucleic acid - those miraculous strings of acids that code our physical characteristics. I would like to suggest a new member of the team, ENA - Exceptional Neurological Activity. ENA occurs as we experience life.

Think about it for a moment. Experience occurs in the brain. Everything else that we “experience” is the result of the transmission of information to the brain. Eyes -  directly hard wired to the brain via the optic nerve, ears, same thing for sound.  Smell, taste, pressure, pain, pleasure, everything gets picked up by the billions of little “radio telescopes” of our nervous system and is beamed back to the brain that codes it into the specific events that we experience in our lives. I would posit that these events get laid down in the brain as bits of ENA, most likely as unique electrical clusters part of which includes the duration of the experience. OK, now hold that thought as I jump way out into the outfield.

As I have mentioned before, after having spent every month of the last 51 years of my life either being a college student or teaching college students, I am entering phased-retirement.  This has directly or indirectly triggered several activities. First, the on-going effort to organize the last 20 years or so of this blog into a quasi-book form. Another shout out to sister Margaret who kept all the emails. Second, gathering and categorizing the various drawings, sketches, photographs and doodles created over those previous 50 or so years. Yeah, I kept those old class notebooks. Third, as I move out of the big office I garnered over the years, I am again laying hands on the images and sculptures I have created, and lived with, for the last few decades.

What I am now encountering in those essays, images and sculptures is refined ENA. I have written elsewhere that a work of art is a repository for the artist’s chord.  Hand me a huge block of marble and an array of hammers and chisels and, no matter how many Red Bulls you pour down my throat, David is not going to leap out. That iconic work is the result of a bit of refined Michelangelo ENA - Exceptional Neurological Activity;  a unique synthesis of Michelangelo’s chord, including his skills and intuition and the marble itself infused in that unique harmonic “Michelangelo creative construction.” 

So here is the interesting part. As I encounter my earlier works - the product of my chord and the moment in which the drawing, doodle, poem, whatever, was created - the original refined ENA fires up again. Through my current interaction with these artifacts, I am there again, in that moment. This is different from memory, or recall. This is a duplication of the original ENA, and as such, I would hazard to assert, is the arrow of time flying backward. Obviously, I am not physically transported back to the moment in which those works were created. But to make that a deal breaker is to give into the corporeally dominated oneway street mandate of previous definitions of time - time as we know it. I am becoming increasingly fascinated by the idea of “time as we don’t know it.”

If we mark time not as the decay of atoms or the other physical devices from the past, but rather as the unfolding of experience, then to “re-experience” an event is to literally move to a different point in time. I am intentionally trying to avoid the phase “go back in time” as that will give unintended credence to the “oneway street” notion of time. It might be more accurate to think of time as all possible routes through experience.  Hence time only becomes oneway when we choose a particular experiential route, and remains oneway only as long as we choose to remain on that route, to engage with experience on that route.

I do need to admit that we probably cannot “unchoose” a route we have already traveled. We cannot unbreak the glass, we cannot unspill the wine, we cannot call back the unfortunate words. But what has occurred on a route we have already traveled need not pre-ordain the route we next choose.  The “many worlds” version of quantum mechanics, which purports that part of the weirdness of quantum mechanics is that there is not just the world of our here-and-now, but countless alternative worlds in which some versions of our self explores the “roads not taken,” is very much like the notion of time I am suggesting.  After all quantum mechanics does live in the space-time continuum, and who is to say that our ENAs cannot slip along that highway? So when I pick up a drawing from 2006, touch a sculpture from 2000, I’m not saying I return to those points on the calendar, rather I am saying that I experience again that particular, unique, perhaps folded, place in time.  Which, now that I think about it, implies that we just might be able to learn how to unbreak the glass and unspill the wine - just in time for dinner.

An analogy. Deep breath - here we go. 

The Velcro Sphere:  Imagine each Exceptional Neurological Activity - ENA - event as a snippet of velcro. Both sides, the side with all the tiny hooks and the side with all the tiny loops that the hooks attach to.  One side of the velcro is the historic moment when the ENA was completed. The other side is the artifact that was created as a result of the ENA.  OK, so once the ENA is completed, the two sides of the velcro separate and get tossed into a universe-sized snow globe - you know those glass things with a scene inside, you shake it and little flakes of fake snow swirl around so it looks like it is snowing inside? The two halves of the ENA are now out there in existence. Swirling around. Could be they hook up with another harmonic snippet out there and become a new insight or inspiration for someone else in another place and time - interesting - but I don’t want to go there right now.

Rather I am intrigued with what happens when I encounter the artifact that I created at an earlier point in time - a drawing, a piece of broken sculpture, a poem, anything that was the product of an earlier ENA.  I would like to hypothesize that at that moment those separated snippets of velcro reconnect. I do not “remember” that previous ENA - I live it again.  The historic moment and the artifact reconnect, generating a new ENA in which that which we have learned to call “the past” becomes a part of "the present," with a continued potential to become part of "the future.”

And, yes, I am aware of how truly strange that sounds.  My intention is not to assert that there are other limited particular paths for the fabled “arrow of time.” My intent is the opposite. I would posit that like the “many worlds” theory in quantum mechanics, time is an entity of many paths for many arrows; forward, backward, right, left, up, down, and off into all those dimensions we have yet to discover. And so why haven’t we discovered them? Consider blinders. Driving those forward-only cars down oneway streets.  I see only that which I expect to see. Alternative visions of time and experience - rather common in non-traditional, non-western, views of the world, time and existence - are often written off as “mythology" or “primitive epistemologies." 

Maybe. Maybe not. But certainly worth our consideration and our “time.” Or to quote a proverb from someone, somewhere in a somehow different time - “There are none so blind as those who will not see."

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Note:  [New Scientist just posted in its June 30, 2018 issue has a neat article on how to think about time.]

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In Praise of a Duomath

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While editing Wall posts from back in 2002, in preparation for the “Wall book,” it struck me that in those early days I was more prone to shoot off quick, and shorter, posts than I do these days. There appears to have been some “good news/bad news” associated with that practice. The bad news was a number of typographical and usage errors that I now find unacceptable. The good news was that I would send you thoughts I found interesting without waiting for a full-blown essay to evolve. It is in the spirit of that “good news” that I send you this somewhat shorter post.

According to Wikipedia, “a polymath (Greek: πολυμαθής, polymathēs, "having learned much,” Latin: homo universalis, "universal man"^]) is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas—such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.”

Left unaddressed in this definition is the question of just how many “maths” one needs to master before becoming a polymath. Three? Eight? A dozen? Having been math phobic from an early age, the question never arouse for me. However, I am concerned that this attention to the poly may blind us to the equally praiseworthy accomplishments of various “maths” less “poly” in nature.  

I have been spending several hours a day in the company of one such - let us call her a “duomath": Helen Macdonald. Well, not in her actual “company.”  The young woman doesn’t know me from Adam, nor I her, except for the acquaintance I can claim from listening to her read her book H is for Hawk. I am far from the first to notice that this is an exceptional book. It garnered her the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize, The Costa Book Award, and the 2016 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in France. So the first “math” of this duomath is that the young woman (born in 1970 - so young from my perspective) writes wonderfully well. She has an almost magical ability to use words in a way that allows us to see and feel the world through her senses. The prose becomes poetry, without the cloying pretension that can subvert a work so artfully crafted as Hawk. And I should note that my perspective is honed from a long lifetime of reading (born in 1948 and still counting - so long from my perspective) at a pace many would find borderline obsessive. It is not unusual for me to read a book a day, and I always have at least a couple open somewhere. So let me assert in a phrase some will find both ageist and sexist— the girl can flat out write!

It is the second math in combination with the first that is making my current experience unique. Ms. Macdonald reads the book herself. This is most often the kiss of death in the evolving world of audiobooks. An author somewhere becomes convinced that only they can give life to the “inner voice” of their successful work, somewhere a producer caves, and somewhere a possibly decent audiobook dies. It is true the Ms. Macdonald is by far the dominant voice in the work. The only exception being the occasional, brief appearance of T.H. White, author of The Once and Future King and fellow falconer. So Macdonald avoids the quicksand of a multi-voiced drama. That being said, let me again opine — the girl can flat out read! 

So what is the bad news? There is some. We need to keep in mind that the work has been called a "misery memoir.” And it is a dissection of despair, a tapestry that Macdonald wove from the varied threads created by the grief she felt at her father’s untimely death and the simultaneous existential challenges and revelations manifest in the training Mabel, her goshawk - the most intractable of all raptors. It is important, I believe, to assert that she did not write this book for us. In all likelihood she probably did not want to write this book. Rather it seems she had to write the book in order to master her soul, to move past her past into a future beyond one of numbing grief.

It is in her moments of deepest revelation that I am reminded that genius and insanity claim apartments in the same building. The writing is often genius, a genius that often chillingly depicts the near insanity of deep depression. Macdonald’s reading does reveal the achingly beautiful “inner voice” of this book. But that is the voice of a deeply shaken, fragile young woman. The work is not balm for those similarly disoriented. In terms of Distilled Harmony, this is a work of discord. Macdonald does eventually make her way to a kind of harmony, but the telling of her tale remains a dark tale of survival. Not a pean to victorious harmony. Were she my daughter, as she chronologically could be, and I had read this book, I would be terribly concerned. But then, were she my daughter, and were I still alive, there would have been no reason to write the book.

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Disrupting Disruption

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I’m not quite sure who or what we are supposed to be disrupting this week. I certainly do not know if I am missing a major “disruption” event, and I am woefully ignorant of what hashtag I should follow to keep informed regarding the disruption.  Truth be told, the whole “hashtag” thing has passed me by - other than a silly game we used to play in the sixties with a pipe and glazed donuts.  But I digress. 

The point is that disruption is simply philosophically at odds with the first and primary tenet of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony.  To disrupt something is to introduce discord, and that stands in direct opposition to the notion of fostering harmony. 

However, let me point out that fostering harmony is not the same as opposing change. Quite the contrary. It is the existence of discord that mandates fostering harmony.  So in that regard fostering harmony and the multiple “disruption” movements share similar motivations - meaningful social change.  It is in the preferred avenue to change that harmony diverges from disruption. Disruption rests on the idea that if you cripple something - an industry, attitude or norm, for example - something preferable will arise from the ashes of the aftermath.  I suppose I am old enough to be nervous about that assumption.  Which brings me to a thought that has been intriguing me recently. 

There is this old saw that asserts that folks tend to be liberal in their youth and grow more conservative as they age. It is probably accurate - but only to a point. Most likely, such a change is not so much a case of shifting political philosophy as it is a case of variations in the application of experience.  Let me clarify.  Babies awake each morning to a world that is largely new.  Because, for them, “all my life” is a brief burst of time: “When I cry the big people feed me. It has been that way ‘all my life.’” As we age “all my life” expands, as do the histories against which we judge reasonable courses of action.   

It is no accident that the “disruption” movements seem disproportionately fueled by “digital natives” - people born after the Internet went public in 1994.  They have lived “all their life” in a world unimaginable to their ancestors.  My parent’s, and certainly my grandparent’s life-views were indelibly shaded by World Wars I and II, and the Great Depression of the mid-20th century. Caution was inbred. Take it slow. Tomorrow could easily be much worse than today.  It is easy to see how that inclination to pessimism could lead one to believe that a cautious conservatism was an inevitable part of growing older, and theoretically at least, wiser.  

That is not the reality experienced by today’s digital natives.  They have lived “all their lives” in a digital environment which changes everyday.  It may be as seemingly insignificant as changing the way they connect with their social media “friends,” or the more subtle, but infinitely more important change that social media have brought to the very concepts of “friend” and “friendship.” The germane point is that digital natives have grown up believing that if something changes today, and that change isn’t what you had in mind - no problem - it can be easily changed again tomorrow.  Napster disrupts the music industry, but then swiftly disappears and is replaced by iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, etc.  Electronic publishing disrupts traditional publishing which responds with ebooks, Kindle, and other digital platforms. So for digital natives disruption is a good thing because the resultant chaos shakes out in change that, eventually, seems to be largely positive.  It has been that way “all their lives.” 

Distilled Harmony sees change differently.  Disruption is just another word for discord and, as I said earlier, stands in opposition to harmony.  From a Distilled Harmony perspective any positive change must move us away from discord toward greater harmony. Hence, guided harmonic change assumes that you need to know where you are going before you destroy where you are.   

Think of a kid playing with a bunch of colored blocks.  S/he looks at the tower that had been left behind by the previous play group.  Not liking that particular tower, the kid knocks it down and begins to build a whole new tower, more to his/her liking.  No big deal as long as we are talking about children and towers of colored blocks. But when we are talking about major industries and institutions, the adults in the room have to step up. 

From the perspective of the Distilled Harmony moral philosophy, there are a number of towers in our culture that are seriously, rapaciously, out of tune. Education, domestic poverty, social and economic inequities, health care, insurance, environmental stewardship, political transparency; each often sounds a discordant note worthy of its own discussion.  But taking on those major discordancies is not the point of this essay.

Rather, the point is to assert that to disrupt the current reality without a significant harmonic replacement in mind is the behavior of a petulant child trashing the tower in the playroom. S/he assumes that they can build a better tower, and if not, well, then someone else will.  Again, that is almost cute if we are talking about somewhat ill-mannered children and colored blocks. But in the grown-up world it is reckless and irresponsible. To resist that form of almost casual disruption is not a case of conservative versus liberal, it is a case of championing harmony over discord. And that is wise at any age. 

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Rolling Down the Hill

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It is a deep but indistinct memory.  Rolling down a grassy slope.  It is very much a spring or summer memory. It is also a solitary memory. There is no one rolling alongside me. Just the sun, perhaps a touch of lilac in the breeze, the tang of disturbed dandelions. It is a strangely silent memory. No traffic, no bird songs. A visual moment with just that hint of scent.

There are a couple of possible locales and eras.

Most of my childhood and adolescence was spent in Springfield, Ohio. On the corner of our block was a vacant lot.  I remember thinking that the edges of that lot were slopes leading down to the sidewalk. In my "K through, maybe, 3" memory the slopes are steep, long and verdant. However, my memories from this same era report that my Uncle Allen raised pigs the size of cattle, so a grain of salt may be necessary here. And those slopes of questionable duration terminated abruptly in rather prosaic sidewalks - one bordering a busy thoroughfare. The memory suggests something more rural, a gentle descent, A field? More park-like.

During 5th and 6th grade I attended school at the American International School in Vienna, Austria.  The playground was out back, but beyond the official playground was a rather steep and overgrown slope leading down somewhere. Railroad tracks maybe? But far enough away to allow for a soft landing well before the tracks. Also, along one side of the playground - behind a rambling and crumbling concrete wall - was a large deserted structure with a once impressive garden. This was 1959 to 1961 and Vienna was still liberally dotted with bombed-out and abandoned buildings and homes. This neighboring structure had been, at some time, quite grand. Ponds and battered statues peaked through trees and bushes long left to run riot. Very “Secret Garden.” Toward the rear it, too, sloped. A hill ripe for rolling. I suspect the older students explored other types of rolling in its shadowy bowers.  Even I, callow sixth-grader that I was, stole a kiss along those rose-draped hedges. The object of my youthful ardor was a sweet honey-haired, green-eyed girl whose father had just been transferred in from Paris. I was completely besotted. Yet, as I said, the memory is a solo. No blushing, twirling, twosomes.

Try as I might to pin it down, the memory defies both locale and chronology. It seems firmly ensconced just beyond the edge of conscious recall. Only those subtle sensations reveal themselves. The smell of grass, that Spring/Summer feel in the air, the rushing invincibility youth, and then a sudden pause staring up at the broad blue bowl of the sky. The tracings of birds and the incremental edging of startling white clouds mark the only movement. An ineffable peacefulness. A gloriously harmonic moment. I am caught between wanting to know the where and when of this recurring reflection, and an equally strong inclination to leave well enough alone and simply savor the possibilities.

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Memoir as Still Life

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I must confess that the end of the semester has prompted me to pull on my hip waders and go stomping through the melancholy marshes of “never-again-land.” Walking out of the incredibly prosaic computer building where my multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank tests would be machine-scored, I sighed “Well, I’ll never do that again.”  Not exactly a momentous experiential loss. But as I wander about campus in something of a “pre-phased-retirement-funk,” wondering if or when I might pass this way again, a more interesting thought came to mind: memory as a series of still lifes.

You see it occurred to me that I really wasn’t worried about missing the various venues. They are shifting weekly as the campus and its immediate environs are caught in a throes of compulsive construction. Like Rome, new structures rise on the bones of ancient architectural acquaintances. That is when I realized I wouldn’t really miss the old buildings all that much. Rather, I was feeling blue about the people who had walked these paths with me, almost all of whom, via the vagaries of time and life, were now absent. Having pinned down the source of my discontent, I now make a conscious effort to greet their shades with a smile, and a chuckle of shared memories.  

Less this reflection grow too, too, maudlin, let me hasten to point out that relatively few of these dear departed are dead. A university campus, despite the seemingly solid ivy and towers, is a transient world.  Students graduate and move on with their lives, colleagues answer the call of other opportunities, some have preceded me into retirement, friends slide into the maze of life and too often become little more than a cryptic sig on a forwarded email or a shared picture on the black mirrors of the 21st century.

Yet some of those memories are the defining moments of my life, and I am becoming more and more attached to the idea of something akin to a memory palace of my life as lived up to this place and time. Building a "memory palace," by the way, is something at which I am a colossal failure. I just can’t get past the intimidating notion of creating imaginary rooms in an imaginary house into which I further imagine placing things that will remind me of now third or fourth order things that I am prone to forget. Really, now. How is that rational?  So my attempts at those memory palaces quickly degrade to funhouse halls of mirrors. 

Perhaps instead, I should say a memory "gallery." A gallery in which particular rooms are dedicated to specific eras or individuals. And on the walls are painted still lifes of the defining moments from that slice of my life. “And why paintings?” You ask. “Why not photographs?” For the same reason that I prefer memoirs to biographies. Biographies attempt to capture the “reality” of a life and are judged by historical accuracy. Memoirs seek to capture the distilled essence of lives lived, unfettered by the unflattering glare of the “data” that actual photographs may shoulder into the depiction of a magic moment.

An analogy:  It may have been around the same time that my buddy Dan and I put on the Big Rock Show, or it may have been several years later, but at some point in our youth “rock tumblers” had their moment in the commercial sun. You bought a “rock polishing kit” that consisted of a small bag of ordinary looking rocks about the size of the first joint of your little finger, a bag of polishing grit, a “tumbler” container - a bit shorter and fatter than a soup can - and a small motor-driven device that would keep the container rolling over in place like a hamster exercise wheel. You unscrewed the top of the container, dumped in the rocks, the grit, and some water, and screwed the lid back on. You then put the container onto the tumbling device, plugged it in and turned it on, causing the container, rocks, water and grit to tumble over and over and over. And you left it alone for a few weeks. Well, what usually happened was when, after checking the rocks hourly for a couple of days and seeing no change, you just forgot about it and went off in pursuit of some more immediate gratification - riding bikes, playing backyard football or something. 

A few weeks later, usually on a rainy afternoon when there was nothing else to do, you came upon your rock polisher chugging away in a corner of the garage. You turned it off, opened it up, and rinsed the grit off the now magically transformed rocks. Where once had been nondescript, dull stones, were gleaming, smooth, dazzling fragments of the history of the planet. That is fairly accurate description of how the tumbling grit of life and experience turn memory into memoir — turn a photograph into a still life.

You see, without practice, perhaps instruction, and specific compositional intent, most photographs doggedly record the dull bag of rocks of our lives. And the Internet is the greatest rock collector ever conceived. We post over a billion rocks, er, pictures to it everyday. So still life paintings, not photographs, hang in my memory gallery.

Which brings me, more or less directly, to my recurring frustration with my inability to draw or paint those still lifes that I can see so clearly in my head. We look at Picasso’s later works, and assert “I could do that!” while naively forgetting  that in his early years the man did classical realism with the best of them. I look at my own work and realize that deep behind a work that appears to be the result of simplistic doodle done in a faculty meeting, the more discerning viewer can see within those subtle strokes the echoes of another similarly simplistic doodle actually executed over the course of two faculty meetings! But, I’m really OK with that. I realize that while some drawing and painting can be taught, the truly gifted are, well, gifted. And I am pretty much over the fact that I was daydreaming the day that those particular abilities were handed out.

So I continue to paint those still lifes in my mind, and lovingly hang them in my memory gallery. There is no admission charge, but sadly, I am the only patron allowed to view the art. I try to make up for that obvious flaw by crafting the catalogue descriptions which often end up here, hanging on a written Wall. 

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Another 3 AM Wall Post, or The Problem with Monotheism

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OK, so here it is 3:18 in the morning and I have been startled from sleep by a weird dream in which my old buddy Lawrence and I are being forced to either check out of, or switch rooms at a generic convention hotel. Apparently, some rock band had trashed a suite across the hall and if we didn’t move we would share in charges for those damages. I don’t remember just how we were linked to the band.  .  .  dreams fade so fast.

Anyhow, I am lying here thinking, naturally enough, about the problem with monotheism. The major issue - it seems to me at the moment - is that monotheism is defenseless in the face of rational thought.  I mean only a completely callow theologian - or someone whose notion of “the world” is constrained by their own tiny village - envisions a single god, who, in addition to managing the affairs of the entire universe, is supposed to see the single sparrow fall. 

On the other hand, if you have Flutter, goddess of the feathered creatures, a single sparrow is right in her wheelhouse, her having rather limited responsibilities. You know what I mean? OK, so she took her eye off the ball with that whole passenger pigeon thing, and the Dodo. But the bald eagle is rebounding nicely. And crows have always been fine,

Of course the problem with that approach is that you can end up with a whole unwieldy family tree of gods and goddesses, and no doubt arguments would arise regarding who really was responsible for the sparrow. Is it Flutter, goddess of the feathered creatures, or the Blessed Beaker, responsible for not only the quality of wine and ale, but also for certain creatures possessing beaks? And don’t forget the problem of simply remembering the names of all the gods and goddesses and their attendant rituals. 

So, purely organizationally speaking, it does make sense to bring in a sort of celestial CEO whose portfolio includes clarifying areas of responsibility for each specific god or goddess. This would allow penitents to address their supplications to either Flutter or the Blessed Beaker specifically; or perhaps more generally to the Celestial CEO who would see to it that the request was brought to the appropriate deity’s attention so that the falling of the single sparrow would be duly noted.

Perhaps that is why I worry about a deity tasked with keeping an eye on me - or the sparrow - continually. I am more comfortable with a more inverted structure to sacred interactions. As the old Paul Simon song Some Folks Lives Roll Easy, puts it, “Here I am, Lord, knocking at your place of business.” The idea is a type of unique, individual, conversation in which the petitioner can chat directly with the deity on an “as needed” basis. I mean, realistically, prayer is often an internal values clarification exercise. By the time you figure out what you are asking of Flutter, or Zeus, or whatever deity resides at the “place of business” you have sought out, you have also come to a better understanding of what’s on your own “to do list” and which items you hope will attract some divine intervention.

That may be asking a lot of the sparrow. But on the other hand, the sparrow may be working from an entirely different model.

Well, it is pushing 4 o’clock now. I wonder if the rock band has checked out yet. .  .  . 

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Stretched Upon Parting

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It is only natural that a work with the length and complexity of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings would merit more than one post here on The Wall. This is the first, others may follow.  

As Frodo prepares to leave Middle Earth to sail to The Havens with Bilbo, Gandalf and the great Elves of the now-ending Third Age of the World, he speaks to Sam of the nature of partings.  He is, in his words, “stretched” between the world in which he has lived, but where he can no longer find his ease, and The Havens, a place that he has never seen but which promises peace and, my word, harmony.  My thoughts about retirement bounce about in that conceptual space.  Doing “phased retirement” in which one essentially becomes half a faculty member for two years seems sometimes an excellent idea. Other times it recalls the old saw - a uniquely appropriate noun - about cutting a dog’s tail off an inch at a time so that it doesn’t hurt so much.

I find myself in a situation that will become increasingly unique. I have worked in the same job, at the same place, for 37 years. And, depending on where you draw the lines, I will have been here 39 or 40 years when I become “really” retired. Teaching as I do about technology, media and communication, it has never really been the "same job."  When I first came here we were teaching film and audio editing using razor blades and tape.  Today audio and visual editing is an exercise of keyboard, mouse and screen, of hard drives and 4K resolution. A reality built around black mirrors in purse or pocket and speakers in your ears.   

The “messages” of the early 80s were “programs" that would begin each fall, and show “reruns" in the summer.  If you missed it, well, you missed it.  Home video recorders lurked somewhere on the horizon for thousands of dollars. The idea of using critical methods cribbed from Sociology, English, and Philosophy to examine the cultural and social meanings embedded within those programs needed to be defended in professional journals.  I wrote one of the first of those defenses for the 2nd edition of Critical Studies in Mass Communication back in 1985. It was called "Of Butterflies and Criticism,” and was seen, with the exception of a few like-minded renegades, as being every bit as flighty as the title might imply. 

Today we post 300 hours of video to YouTube every minute, and independent entities like Netflix and Amazon create new video narratives that we can “binge on demand” for hours and hours.  News programs give way to social media posts, rants and tweets. Further, any insightful analysis of this brave digital world without multiple references to dead French philosophers and their intellectual progeny is considered, if not completely passé, then at least in very poor taste. So, yes, I work in the same physical place, but not in the same intellectual or pragmatic space that I walked into those several decades ago. Like Frodo, I feel stretched. 

Frodo had grown up in the Shire, a sun-kissed and bucolic land, lolling blissfully amidst gently revolving seasons, careless and carefree, and utterly oblivious to the encroaching dangers from which unseen hands did provide shelter.  I do not mean to imply that my professional world in 1981 fit that gentle description. The aphorisms “fights in the academy are so vicious because the rewards are so small,” and “trying to lead a faculty is like trying to herd cats,” did not spring from some innocent Socratic world beneath shady oaks.  Still the conflicts in those academic Shires seemed more polite, the politics less naked.  

Yet now almost 4 decades later, “the shadow in the East,” as it was known in Middle Earth, has crept upon my academic landscape. The change is all the more ironic in that it is one we dearly sought, earnestly courted for years. You see, in the modern “research university” a department without a graduate program sits at the children’s table, separate from and irrelevant to the conversations of the adults at the big table. For a decade or so we have been able to offer both a Master’s and Doctorate degrees. So we now sit at the big table amidst the cut-crystal of research grants and funded-centers, while fawning graduate and research assistants wait table, hoping to be invited to port and cigars afterwards in the billiards room.

Frodo had gone to war. He had cast the ring into the fire. But upon returning home to the Shire, even after purging the remnants of the shadow, he could not find comfort in this land he had left behind.  Were we to grab, for just a moment, another book off the shelf, and turn to a different wizard - Frodo had seen the man behind the curtain.  After 40 plus years in the academy, here and elsewhere, there are few if any curtains behind which I have not peeked. Yet, the pipe-dream of a university that still beguiles me, and provides the hazy lenses through which I view my professional ideal, comes from the academy’s version of the Shire. From 1967 until 1971 I was a student at Kalamazoo College, a small liberal arts college in Kalamazoo, Michigan - not unlike Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio where my father had taught when I was boy. I saw both those institutions as part of the academy’s "sun-kissed and bucolic lands, lolling blissfully amidst gently revolving seasons." They may have looked very different from within, from the front of the classroom. If so, I was willfully deceived, and have worn those comfortable blinders for 30 years.  

Ah, you caught that discrepancy. I have been in front of the class for 40 years, but the blinders have served me for only 30. Try as I might, I have not been able to keep them in place this last decade.  As we rushed to take our place at the adult table of graduate degrees, the gentle laughter of the children’s table - and yes, the occasional tomfoolery - got left behind.  We began to take ourselves terribly seriously. We hired - sometimes under significant pressure from the big table - colleagues who delighted in taking themselves very seriously, who would parade around in invisible yet insistent robes of their own importance and reputation.  We also hired, often of our own volition, bright and brittle young colleagues whose voluminous resumes cloaked aspirations to possess similar raiment. Their abilities were without question, their loyalty less so.  I have watched them come and go this last decade and more, drawn away by bigger chairs at larger tables.

So dear Frodo, I too am stretched. We know we cannot return to those Shires of ours that once were but are no more. Tolkien has given you The Havens where the gentle folk of the Third Age of the World walk, and laugh, sing and talk amidst elvish trees of wondrous blossoms and matching fragrance. He leaves me no such solace. Friends whisper from the beguiling glades of retirement, “Come on over! It’s wonderful.” That may well be. Maybe the academic Shire I hold in my heart never actually existed. It surely exists no more in my waking and walk-about reality. Perhaps I would feel less stretched had I not so loved the illusion. 

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Linguistic Larceny

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It was time for our semi-annual HVAC inspection.  The technician showed up with his impressive tool belt, and a small satchel leaking wires, gauges, and other gizmos and gadgets necessary to his trade. I do not know what your experience is in these instances, but mine inclines me to hide the checkbook and credit cards. It seems that no matter how well the system seems to be operating major - and expensive - adjustments are necessary. And, if one is to believe these modern day snake oil sales reps, the company requires them to advise you just what all needs to be done.

Anticipating a sales pitch for a small nuclear power plant for the attic or a backyard wind turbine, either of which would allow us to sell power back to the grid once the reasonable installation costs of 8 to 12 thousand dollars had been defrayed in just 15 years, I tried to cut him off at the pass: “I’m moving into phased-retirement, so we are really in a ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it mode.’”

To my astonishment his reply was a wry chuckle and, “I hear you friend, believe me, I hear you.” And he went off about his business. A couple of hours later he came back into the house for me to sign off on his inspection forms. One page included several hundred dollars of suggested “upgrades.” “You don’t really don’t need any of this stuff, but they expect me push it,” he allowed. 

He did want to talk about some of the art in the house and we spent a pleasant half hour or so talking about Venetian masks and Christine’s fondness for Renaissance religious icons. However, upon leaving he said, “Oh, the pollen is about to get bad. You might want to replace your furnace filters. Lowe’s has pretty good prices.”  I thanked him and hustled off to the computer to visit the company website to give him a glowing review.

The next day I gathered up the old furnace filters and took myself off to Lowe’s to purchase replacements. I found the right aisle, made sure I was in the section for the brand of ultra-hypo-allergenic-catch-everything filters we use and started to put one in my cart when the price tag smacked me upside the head: $60.00!  Now don’t get me wrong, I was expecting 25 or 30 dollars, but 60 just seemed off the chart.

I inspected the filter more carefully.  I discovered that there was a mustard colored disk nestled in the middle of the filter with instructions written below. Seems I was about to purchase a “Smart Filter” which, once I had downloaded the app and paired it with my phone would use a proprietary algorithm to detect optimal airflow, report on local atmospheric conditions, and, oh - let me know when it needed to be changed, for another 60 bucks!  My inner-Luddite rose up in indignation.

Maybe the damn thing works. Who knows. That is not the issue. The issue is that the marketers have stolen another word - “smart.”  We see it everywhere. Our telephones are “smart” phones, our televisions have become “smart” TVs - both themselves linguistic remnants of a previous era when “tele” was all the rage.  Look in the beverage section of any drug store or convenience store and you will see Smart Water on display, seriously. A closer inspection of the label might well reveal that the Smart Water is also “gluten-free.” I don’t know. I am afraid to look.  

But I digress. Let us return to the issue at hand. These filters are not “smart.” They are anything but. Let us seek some clarity in the dictionary. Dictionary.com - which compiles from some more recognizable sources gives us this:

Smart (1- 6) deal with pain, as in “that smarts”, an opportunity for cheap shots that I pass up only reluctantly.

—adjective, smart·er, smart·est.
7: quick or prompt in actions, as persons
8: having or showing quick intelligence or ready mental capability: a smart student
9: shrewd or sharp, as a person in dealing with others or as in business: a smart business person
10: clever, witty, or readily effective, as a speaker, speech, rejoinder, etc. 

My furnace filters - actually their furnace filters, I bought the ones with similar filtration that did not “pair” to an app on my “smart” phone - are not, by any stretch of these definitions “smart.”  Yes, it can “say” “I am dirty - change me.” But it cannot say “I am dirty. Change me. And by the way, the house is on fire.” You need a different app for that.

There is, perhaps, a better descriptor for these filters. I suggest “savant”. Back to the dictionary: 

Savant -

1: a person of learning; especially : one with detailed knowledge in some specialized field (as of science or literature)

2: a person affected with a developmental disorder (such as autism or mental retardation) who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in some limited field (such as mathematics or music); especially : autistic savant.

These filters are “autistic savants,” in less PC days also known as “idiot savants.” Brilliant in one tightly focused area, but complete idiots in the rest of the world. Think Rain Man but without Dustin Hoffman’s tug at the heart strings.  The reinvention of “smart” is the salesforce’s foot in the door, which by design or not, pries open the way for the “Internet of Things” We are encouraged to see the Internet of Things as this helpful safety net of “smart” products moving in graceful accord to cocoon us safe from the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” An equally, if not more, plausible interpretation is that the Internet of Things will be an unruly conglomeration of idiot savants who don’t know that the house is on fire.

But, I keep forgetting that this is a post about linguistic larceny. “They” have stolen “smart.”  Mind you I do not believe, as apparently the French still do, that language is a static beast, doomed to be forever constrained by the standards of the breed.  Not at all. I believe the chief glory of the English language lies in its complexity and flexibility. After all, Shakespeare invented words. By various counts some 1,700 English words first saw the light of their literary day in his plays and poems. 

But Shakespeare didn’t just toss in words “willy-nilly” or “dilly-dilly” for that matter. Rather he did so when the language as it stood failed him; when the emotion or meaning of the moment stretched the fabric of the language to the shredding point. Then a new word, a better word, a more precise articulation became necessary, and he supplied it. The current pilfering of “smart” is no such moment.  It is rather the opposite of such a moment,  it is a cheapening of the language that smears nuance or clarity to confusion - a child’s finger painting with streaks of red, green and yellow still visible around the edges, but which on closer examination fades in its center to grit and mud.

In truth, I am more disappointed than offended.  One clings to the hope that humanity remains on an ascending path. That we become, with each succeeding generation, something better, more refined, more perceptive, more capable of expressing beauty and harmony than we were before. Yet when our language which, with our visual depictions, enables the expressions of our most ascendant selves becomes instead increasingly brutish and simplistic, the opposite conclusion presents itself: we are, in this aspect at least, devolving. 

It may well be, to complete my earlier uncited cribbing from the Bard, a time to “take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.”

Hamlet, Act III, scene 1.

By which I mean one should seek to apply the second tenet of Distilled Harmony, Enable Beauty, to your language. Written, spoken, dreamed, imagined. Who knows, well-crafted language might eventually morph into a meme.

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And for those of you who might be curious, some etymology on “dilly dilly” - a phrase so completely stolen by Budweiser that hollering it at the 2018 Master’s Golf Tournament will get you ejected. Right, the Augusta National Golf Club, while creaking its way to admitting women and people of color still prohibits any commercial “messages” on the club grounds. Obviously the apparel and the equipment of the golfers is excepted.

The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that in the 1700s a “dilly” was a cart used in agricultural and industrial work. As in “Get your dilly over here.” However, in that era it was also used as an adjective meaning foolish or mad. That might lead to “Are ye dilly? Get yon dilly over here!” It was not until the early 1900s that it acquired the Budweiser stolen meaning of “delightful” or “delicious.” Yet, Wikipedia traces the phrase/lyric “Lavender blue dilly-dilly, lavender green” to English nursery rhymes as early as the late 1600s. Which could, in theory, allow for “That lavender blue dilly dilly seems a dilly color for yon dilly.”

No more dilly-dallying around .  .  .  .   

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Hawking Contradiction

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Steven Hawking’s death continues to recede, but I am still processing it. Given his physical challenges it seemed a continuing miracle that he was alive. But strangely I kept thinking he would persist in defying the odds, and somehow always be there. You’d think our knowledge of his frailty would make his passing easier to accept. But it doesn’t.  

I often encourage my students to avoid being intimidated by the experts, the professionals, even the geniuses. If you want to write, write. If you want to sing, sing.  Driven to sculpt, start a business, become a philosopher or cosmologist, cardiologist, guitarist? Do it, do whatever you choose. Don’t worry about the myriad examples out there who seem to do it better than you. 

But once, maybe twice in a lifetime, you encounter an entity so exceptional that you realize that you could never reach the plateau from which they view the world. I saw Steven Hawking as one such person. But not merely as a physicist. Mathphobic from an early age, I never seriously contemplated playing in that sandbox, so have no real basis for evaluation. I am perfectly content to accept the shared notion that he was the best and brightest since Einstein. Yet there are others who would respond, “Yeah, but what about Feynman? Weinberg? Higgs? Greene? “ Not my sandbox. Not going there. And as I said Hawking staggers me not solely because of his accomplishments as a physicist, but more because he did it all inside his head. No blackboard, no scratchpad, no tablet computer. He was the captive of a body in full revolt, eventually able to only control a few facial muscles. But even so stricken, he was still able to think those amazing thoughts. So, confessing to that level of admiration, I feel less constrained in addressing what appears to be significant contradictions in some of his more broadly focused pronouncements.

  

The New York Times obituary reveals a few of them:

In “A Brief History of Time,” Dr. Hawking concluded that “if we do discover a complete theory” of the universe, “it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists.” He added, “Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that,” he continued, “it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.” 

But then later, "Dr. Hawking felt that there was no need to appeal to anything outside the universe, like God, to explain how it began.“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper,” he wrote, referring to the British term for a firecracker fuse, “and set the universe going.”

He went further later that same year, telling the British newspaper The Guardian, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” 

But still again elsewhere, “God not only plays dice with the universe, but sometimes throws them where they can’t be seen.”

I find the certainty implied by these “Hawkingisms” interesting especially in light of his major finding “Hawking Radiation,” the formula for which he requested to have carved upon his tombstone. The intellectual pursuit that found its resolution in Hawking Radiation, began with other physicists challenging one of Hawking’s own earlier certainties - that nothing could escape the gravitational embrace of a black hole. Nothing, we now know, except Hawking Radiation, the electromagnetic energy that escapes when a black hole captures only half of a particle-antiparticle pair that can spontaneously form along the event horizon of a black hole.

So, I ask myself, is there not an inconsistency between an individual who has literally reshaped our perception of the universe purely through the manipulation of the electronic impulses in his brain, and the idea that “the brain is a computer that simply stops working when its components fail.” What happens to all the information - encoded in cascading mercurial electronic flashes, that resided in his living brain - information that, in my admittedly limited understanding of the reasoning underlying Hawking Radiation - cannot be lost? So where does that resident information go when the “components” fail? 

Perhaps Hawking’s earlier musing regarding the eventual potential to “know the mind of God” is informative. I have no intention of addressing what Hawking may have meant by God, or even more mysterious, “the mind of God.” But there is - in that phrase - an inescapable implication of a kind of universal sentience that still transcends even Hawking’s incredible intellectual scope. A sentience that may well find its clearest manifestation in a “sentient field” that - like the Higgs field imparting mass to all the particles in the universe - permeates the universe lending a shared sentience to existence. 

Again, it is good for us to remember that the awesome mental manipulations that led Hawking to the notion of Hawking Radiation were jump-started by the fact that his initial thoughts about black holes were wrong. They were “certainties” that had to be revised through deeper consideration. More energy, more information being ordered and reordered inside Hawking’s head.

I am reminded of Arthur C. Clark’s (author of among others, the Space Odyssey works) assertion that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It strikes me that there is a warning there. What appears to be magic will, given more time and additional reflection and research, reveal itself to be no more than the latest version of evolving technology. The same might be said of the transient certainties in Hawking’s seemingly conflicting observations. Is there “a mind of God” or do we need not “seek God to light the blue torch paper” of the universe? 

Surely, the most insidious intellectual trap for physicist and philosopher alike is certainty. In asserting the finality of death  - the final crash of the brain, the human computer - Hawking proves himself no more immune to hubris than the rest of us less gifted. The intricate patterns that danced across his stunning bundle of neurons were no random firings. They were intellectual symphonies of surpassing - and lasting - beauty.  And while they were certainly his creations, it is not for him to declare them extinguished with his passing.

I have no trouble imagining philosopher-physicists a thousand years hence explaining to their students, “Yes, they believed that the energy patterns of thoughts died when the individual brain in which they originated ceased its primary biological functions. Settle down now. I know, I know, it seems quite primitive. But remember we’re talking about the early 21st century. Things were quite primitive. It wouldn’t be until  2347 when Jannis et. al. discovered that .  .  .”  

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Two Paths Converged in a Wood That Appeared Yellow

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Two paths converged in a wood that appeared yellow . . .

(This post was actually written a couple of weeks before Stephen Hawking died, but I had not posted it before his death. Then he died and I lost focus and began to work on the essay prompted by his passing. I have pretty much finished with that post. But I will post this first as the two make more sense together. I’ll post the other in a couple of days. - RLS)

I have been encountering some new interest in an old discussion. Most recently the March 3rd issue of New Scientist reviews Angela Potochnik’s book Idealization and the Aims of Science and a collection of essays titled Science Unlimited?: the concept of scientism. Both works are epistemological in nature, focused on how we come to know and understand the physical nature of the universe and the philosophical nature of our own existence. Unfortunately the collection of essays seems, from these reviews anyway, to see the issue as some sort of contest. And they bring out the big guns, quoting Hawking as saying “philosophy is dead,” and Feynman asserting that a philosophy of science is as useful to science as ornithology is to birds. These pronouncements constitute a warning - and perhaps one to which we all should pay more attention - of how wrong even the brightest among us can be when they mistake their own expertise for a kind of global certainty. Potochnik, an unrepentant philosopher, appears to try to take more of a middle road, but is anything but oil on troubled waters when she declares that “science isn’t after the truth.”

I wonder why this intellectual cat fight seems to have nine lives of its own. But then again, having spent almost half a century on university faculties, I am really not at all surprised. The academic world is a world of competitive storytelling. It is the “best” story that gets published, that attracts grants, that gets you tenure. And so to elevate your own story, you must demean or destroy the stories of those others seeking the increasingly limited rewards the academy has to offer. When the storytelling contest takes place within the confines of a particular discipline the contests are usually bound by the canon of the discipline - those dominant stories that define the current beliefs of the tribe. Those narrative duels often tweak and expand the canon, but rarely challenge its central core.

However, when the fight breaks out across disciplines, things can get totally out of control. It is a shame that the “winner takes all” nature of intellectual debate in the academy has seen fit to cast scientists and philosophers as antagonists. Distilled Harmony reveals that nothing could be further from the truth. Academic cat fights proceed from the assumption that for me to be right, you must be wrong. Distilled Harmony proceeds from the mandate of its first tenet - Foster Harmony. In this context that means we should seek to learn what we can from the perspective of the other in order to increase our shared understanding of larger issues.

The truth is that at their most fundamental level science and philosophy seek to answer the same question: what is the nature of the universe and what is our place in it? The fact that we have arbitrarily given the first portion of the question over to science and the second part to philosophy is intellectually myopic.

It is true that to date science has concerned itself primarily with the notion of the mechanics of the universe: how it came to be, what it is made of, and how its various parts work together. The progress it has made down this path in the past thousand years is truly astonishing. Even now hardly a day passes without some new insight regarding the very large frontiers of black holes, distant galaxies, and gravitational waves. The same is true of the incredibly tiny world of nano particles, quantum mechanics and quantum computers.

Philosophy has been less overtly successful, perhaps because its focus has been less precise - seeking, often through religion, to answer those questions better left to its sibling science. But rather than railing against science’s success, philosophy would be better directed to turn its attention to the issues that blend more naturally with science’s investigations.

Science has made great strides in revealing what the universe is and how it works, and occasionally uses those advances to assert its intellectual primacy. However it is only able to tout these advances by quietly failing to address one of the questions that every first year journalism student is taught to apply: why? Why are the universe and existence so structured? And that should be the true calling of philosophy: seeking to understand the reason for, and the universal nature of existence.

If there is one great common theme between these cosmic twins of Science and Philosophy it is that notion of seeking. Both disciplines rest on the cornerstone of curiosity - always searching for the next set of questions posed by the current answers. Assuming certainly should be anathema to both. Certainty in science turns science to dogma and certainty in philosophy ends in fundamentalism. In each case the discipline stagnates and grows more concerned with staking out positions to be defended rather than creating paths to new knowledge and greater understanding. These are fatal flaws as the universe cannot be constrained in a terrarium nor can existence be finally explained with tracts of mystic, unquestionable, declaratory prose.

Perhaps a metaphor offers the best conclusion to this current rambling:

Consider four mountaineers attempting to scale the face of an unknown peak. They may choose to climb separately or together. The two youngest, most fit, and perhaps even the most skilled, sprint off alone on separate paths, determined to be the first to reach the summit. The remaining pair decide to climb together. They carefully check their equipment, study the few available maps and begin their studied ascent. Each takes the lead when the terrain favors his or her unique skills. The other leads when the situation is reversed. They move steadfastly up the mountain eventually gaining the apex from which they can see their younger colleagues, paths now crossed, bickering below. As the pair on the summit survey the surrounding vista, they see another peak nearby, even more beautiful and alluring than the one on which they stand. After a brief meal, and perhaps a nap, Science and Philosophy gather their gear together and, curiosity flaring, begin their next ascent.
.

Tanked

.

I had hustled over to the grocery 

Later than intended, 

But needing a few things that  

Would ease the morning. 

Eggs, coffee, juice. 

Maybe some English muffins. 

I rounded an end cap  

Featuring a flashy rainbow  

Of sugared cereals, 

When I glimpsed him 

From the corner of my eye. 

He was backed, or perhaps 

More accurately, “fronted” 

Into a dark corner shadow. 

The traitorous tail tucked under, 

Beady eyes studiously turned away 

From those lingering shoppers  

Still stalking the aisles at closing time. 

Perhaps it was a conscious strategy, 

Shrinking away from the fluorescent 

Glow illuminating the gaudy filets 

Of “wild caught salmon” nestled on  

Uncomfortable beds of crushed ice. 

If so, it seemed to be working. 

He was, after all, 

The last lobster in the tank. 

All alone he, or she -  

How do you know which? - 

Seemed more piteous than 

The cluster of similarly fated 

Crustaceans that usually caught 

My more focused afternoon attention. 

They would mill about among bubbles. 

Almost like an aquarium  

In the lobby of a posh lawyer’s office, 

Or along the wall of a therapist’s 

Discrete and confidential retreat, 

Aping a display at Seaworld. 

Still, no amount of dissembling could 

Hide the eventual end of this tail. 

Yet there he was,  

Tucked behind a carbonated veil, 

Hoping in vain that somehow the deepest 

Reaches of the tank would provide 

The sanctuary denied him 

At the bottom of the sea. 

It all saddened me somehow, 

So I hurried past

Seeking something grass-fed, 

Or even non-GMO free-range, 

Comfortably wrapped in plastic, 

That I could take home 

And toss out upon the grill. 

.

Silliness . . by any other name.

.

According to the blinking screen on my phone it is 2:29 AM. Which means she must have shown up, what, maybe 20 minutes ago? My ex-wife’s brother’s second wife. She wandered into a dream. Didn’t play a major role in the dream as I recall. But, of course, now that I’m awake the details of the dream have fled. Still, I can remember quite clearly what she looked like. Very pretty woman. A little Polynesian blood perhaps? I can even remember some details of her life, a few of which sent my then brother-in-law off to wife number three. Actually, now I’m not sure if he married number 3 - maybe not. My brother did, but did my then brother-in-law? Who knows? That’s not the point. You see, the problem is I cannot for the life of me remember my ex-wife's brother's number 2 wife's name.  Got the names of her two kids, who remain in touch with my children. I can even recall  the name of my ex-brother-in-law’s first wife. But ex-sister-in-law number two remains nameless.

You might think this would cause me to worry about my fading memory. No, that is not the issue at all! The real cause for concern is far more sinister and widespread. The issue is names. There are simply too many of them. Malthusian doomsday voices cry out about the impossible task of feeding the planet’s burgeoning billions. Feed them? First things first. How are we going to name them all? George Foreman, who famously named his four sons after himself- Georges I, II, III and IV - may have pointed us in the right direction. But even that is I fear, only buckets against the flood. The Hapsburgs tried it, the Catholic Church still does. So a few kings and Popes slipped by, but more kept appearing on the horizon, all needing names! Like the Super Bowl - where does it end? King George the 312th?  CCCXII? Pope Pius the 87th? LXXXVII?

Parents are already cracking under the strain. My class lists grow increasingly weird, evidence of desperate parents driven to Krogers in search of a name that will be unique in preschool. I understand the pressure. But Cheerios Huntington-Smythe? Really?

It is not a new phenomenon, I admit.  Freshman year, Kalamazoo College, circa 1968. A classmate and I presented an original one-act play in a local campus venue called The Black Spot.  Together we crafted the memorable line - “Name names now Norris near Nancy’s nice newly named nuisance.” Ah, they don’t write ‘em like that anymore.

The name of that co-author of my youth? Ah, yes. Ah, Clint. Clint something . . No, not, Eastwood. It will come to me.

4:20 AM. Anita! Her name was Anita

.

Page World

.

“The trouble with poetry is

that it encourages

the writing of more poetry,”

                    - Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry 

An empty page contains

Every possible nuance.

Nouns gather in a circle

As verbs scramble beneath them.

Adjectives pass ammunition . . .

Then everything stops

While the ellipses stroll through,

Holding hands, laughing,

And talking of something else

Entirely . . .

Cowed pronouns huddle together,

Praying that the adverbs 

Can best the dangling participles,

Who seek to breach 

The wall of complex sentences,

Before it all stops

At the bottom of the page.

.

Stalking the Waking Brain

.

It is an image that, not surprisingly, occurs to me most often when lying awake in the hours just after midnight. A brain, not a floppy, oozing true-to-biology brain, but a cartoonish, cute, vaguely puppy-like brain scurries about in the imaginary space above me, avoiding my gentle net of sleep. It is a clever little critter. Just when I think I have it cornered it leaps away chortling  “Ah ha! How about matter and anti-matter? If there had only been a tiny bit more anti-matter after the Big Bang, it would have consumed all the matter and there would be no universe! What do you think about that?” And then it slips out of sight around a corner.   

I follow it down the stairs. Thinking I have it trapped on the landing, I raise my net, “Taxes!” It hollers and slides laughingly down a spiral bannister . 

“Did you lock the garage door?” “Do you think your hip will hurt if you sleep on your right side?” “Will shrinking sea ice doom the polar bears?” “Did you finish the PowerPoint for tomorrow’s lecture?” “Does love extend beyond the heliopause?” “Will we remember previous lives if we attain enlightenment?” “Are there enough eggs in the fridge to make an omelet for breakfast?” “What will retirement be like?” “Should we get a dog?” “Is Milton a silly name for a black lab?” “What is a memory palace and why do I keep forgetting to build one?” “Do people see colors the same way? Or do they see what I call purple when they look at what I call turquoise?" 

I plod gamely after the little bugger and, just as the rosy-fingered dawn begins to flirt with the eastern horizon, I find it curled up on the couch. Eyes tightly closed, it is sucking its little brain thumb, smiling and thinking secret thoughts.  Softly I slip the net of sleep around it. 

.