If I Ran the Lab

Not sure how this will turn out.  It is buried back in a 22 year old file.  It is an obvious homage to Dr. Suess' "If I Ran the Zoo". I sent him a copy and he sent me a drawing of The Cat in the Hat with the caption "McNab runs a great lab, and so does Robert Schrag! Thanks for letting me see it.  Dr. Suess.

If I Ran the Lab

 

By

 

Robert L. Schrag 

“It’s a pretty good lab,” said weird Harold McNab,

“Though the egghead who runs it is really a crab.

And the work that they turn out’s not quality work,

‘Cause the Project Director’s a bit of a jerk.

But if I ran the lab, said weird Harold McNab,

I’d splice up some genes not halfway so drab

As the genes they’ve been splicing ‘round here up ‘til now.

When it comes to strange genotypes, I’d show them how!!

 

First I’d change the lab’s name from ‘Ace Genes and Research’

To ‘Home of the Weirdest New Gene Types on Earth 

And the Strangest New Creatures in this Universe.’

As a name with a grab, that’s not really bad.

And each creature’s rear, when released from my lab

Would carry this label: New Genes by McNab. 

 

There’d be no starting small with bacteriumasis,

I’d jump right on in with a creature colossus

A beastie that started life out as a fungus,

Now stretches from Pittsburg to southwest Columbus.

I’ll call this new creature a Fermi-o-fump

‘Cause we’ll use it on Tuesdays for a nuclear dump.

And the glow that it gives for the rest of the week,

Reduces the oil we now buy from the Shiek.

 

I’d move on to grain the following morn,

And I’d whip up a Superdee-Popper-d’Corn,

A version that passes an elephant’s eye

And tops out in August at forty feet high!

With self-popping kernels of one pound or two,

And cobs, that when carved, make a nifty canoe,

The shucking’s made simple with an easy pull tab,

That grows on this nifty new corn by McNab!

 

And the Superdee-Popper-d’Corn’s not alone,

There’s another new corn-type that begs to be grown.

I’ll call it The Ultimate Cornflake Created

‘Cause the leaf on this monocot corn is mutated

To form cereal bowls for all those who’ve waited

For ready-made breakfasts, organic, prefab,

And grown from those fabulous genes by McNab.

 

They say rice is nice and easy to breed,

And here at McNab’s lab we’ll make what you need.

No domestic rice, all tamed down and mild,

Here in my lab I will start with rice wild.

Then we’ll splice in some genes from a hot chili pepper,

Add tomatoes, add onions, bring garlic you schlepper!

And when this new rice in the free open air grows,

You’ll smell why we named it McNab Rice Rancheros!

 

And wheat is quite neat, but it too is too bland.

So here at McNab lab we’ll all lend a hand

And whip up a wheat strain a touch more exciting 

Than wheats that are currently palates delighting.

First, amber wheat’s nice and is fabled in song,

But to leave it just amber is certainly wrong.

We need purple wheat and blue wheat, don’t y’know?

We will whip up a strain called Wheat Eau d’Rainbow!

Just think of the bread you could bake with this stuff!

Why MOMA’s main hall will not be big enough

To display all the wares that will end baked goods drab,

Another triumph for New Genes by McNab!

 

The next thing we folks at McNab’s lab will dare

Is to clone a whole forest from Grandma’s best chair.

We’ll not talk about copies or facsimiles,

But the very same genes from those very old trees,

The trees that were old when Abe Lincoln was young,

Good wood from the days when the country’d begun.

But don’t worry my Earth Friends, no logging’s in store

When a chair from New Genes by McNab hits the floor.

There’s been no clear cutting or practices grim,

We pick all our chairs from the end of a limb.

They grow right out there, in patterns quite fab,

All thanks to those coded New Genes by McNab. 

 

But it’s time to quit dealing with things vege-table,

Let’s move to the animal kingdom while able.

I’m sure there’re some beasties just waiting for life

To spring from McNab lab’s new gene splicing knife.

For example, the Porker d’Piggy His Nibs,

Engineered for the South, made completely of ribs,

And his littermate, Porker d’Piggy Foo Foo,

Who grows into two tons of pulled Bar BQ!

These swiney, so finey, are just the first stab,

At creating great beasts with New Genes by McNab.

 

But while pork is quite nice, and Pig Foo Foo’s divine,

For the kosher food market we will take a bovine,

And splice in the genes of the sea swimming salmon.

And the creature we get will be perfect, dear madam,

To serve at Bar Mitzvahs and Sisterhood talks

For where else could you find a nice brisket of lox?

And then when we mangae to pull this one off,

You will hear a great cheer – ‘To McNab! Mazel Tov!’

 

In addition to ethnic food one must, these days,

Meet the market demand for the holiday craze,

When dishes traditional must grace the table,

Whether or not the poor sous chef is able.

Thanksgiving’s a day that is tied to a feast,

But the cook in the kitchen just slaves like a beast!

There’s turkey and hams, mashed potatoes and yams,

For guests that your family hauled home in four trams!

And pies without number, pumpkin and mincemeat,

Put the finishing touch on this holiday treat.

But while the stuffed relatives roll out the door

The cooked-out old cook slowly slumps to the floor.

That’s how it once was, but McNab says, ‘No more!’

 

McNab’s new research has made such a break-through,

That a holiday meal is no task you must ache through.

By blending the genes of one fowl and two grains,

Add a couple of fruits, save the best from each strain,

We’ve created a creature that looks quite beserky,

It’s the Eight-Legged, Four-Breasted Self-Stuffing Turkey!

And it nests in the oven to save you more steps,

Laying eggs that taste just like fresh vegetable crepes.

So the main course and side dishes now hit the slab

In one beast, from those folks at New Genes by McNab!

 

But we won’t stop there with dessert to be made.

To ignore the last course fails to service the trade.

So we’ll whip up a plant called The-Pie-In-the-Sky

That grows out the window, six feet or so high.

And the pies that it grows have already been baked,

Boasting crusts upon which reputations are staked.

Plus, it’s crossed with a grasshopper so it is able

To walk cross the floor and hop up on the table.

There it’s served, like the rest of the meal, upon dishes

That are grown on the back of rare deep-diving fishes.

These dishes are cloned from some sweet English custard,

And are eaten at meal’s end with fine Spanish mustard.

 

When the last bite’s been eaten, Cook declares from a chair,

As well-fed descendants lounge ‘bout everywhere,

While a feeling of gratitude fills up the room,

‘Mid the lingering traces of dinner’s perfume,

‘Before all you kids start your games and your pranks,

To the Lord – and the folks at McNab’s – let’s give thanks.’

 

But the holidays come, at the most, once a year.

To make business sense it soon becomes clear

That McNab’s lab needs products so new and so strong

That the market demand remains high all year long.

So we’ll whip up more beasts with awesome new traits

That will leave all the other gene labs at the gate

When we introduce in our Fall catalog

Critters to set the whole country agog!

 

There’s the Grid-Lock-Reducer, a sort of a mammal,

A new type of gene type, an urban type camel

With legs well-designed to stride over the autos

That tie the world up in mechanical knotos!

It’s a creature that sees by both day and by night,

And in really tight places can even take flight,

Thanks to the genes of the Humbird Gigantus

That we dredged from the mud of mighty Atlantis!

 

And the Fast-Food-o’Fetcher’s a wonderful beast

With forty-eight Kangaroo pouches, at least,

To keep hot food hot, and to keep cold food cold,

That feature alone’s worth the beast’s weight in gold.

But we didn’t stop there, though we could have stopped, brudder,

Instead, in each pouch we designed a small udder

With spigots for ketchup and mustard and mayo

And an optional tap for the sauce of the day-o!

We think it’s a beast that you’ll find is ideal

To send out to fetch you a fine fast food meal!

 

For sub-urban folks we’ve designed a new steed,

That we modestly think is the best of the breed

For yard work and gardens that need some up-keeping

This beast the whole countryside soon will be sweeping.

It’s an Ovis-d’Bunny-cum-Elephantatus,

And wait ‘til you see what this creature has brought us!

Part sheep, it keeps lawns and curbsides neatly trimmed,

The bunny gene’s spliced upside down on a whim,

That causes the critter in vegetable beds,

To avoid eating veggies – it plants them instead!

And our garden consultant assures us it’s wiser

To use, in the place of some chem fertilizer,

An organic source of good food for the plants,

Hence, all of the genes from those huge elephants.”

 

“Soooooo. It’s a pretty good lab,” said weird Harold McNab.

“Though the stuff that they turn out is still far too drab.

I would sprinkle the world with some creatures quite fab.

Ah, I certainly would – if I ran the lab.”

Schrag PPP: Sometimes the Delight is in the Details

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

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

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

Enjoy!

Messing Around in the Garage

Messing Around in the Garage

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tears From Nowhere

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Wall Archeology 2nd ed. February 2006

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

There is Sight, and Then There is Vision

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Portable Ritual

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schrag Wall: A Chintzy Heritage

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

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

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

 

OK, I Was Surprised

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

Them: Is this Dr. Robert Schrag?

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

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

Nah. Ain’t gonna happen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oppose Harm, 2nd ed

Oppose Harm

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Hero to Has Been

 Or the tragic tale of the ring-tailed lemur.

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

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

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

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

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

Enable Beauty, 2nd ed.

 The options are always either Harmony or discord. Harmony is beautiful, discord is not.

I need to acknowledge right up front here that I bring a bias to this tenet. I don’t do dark, I don’t do horror, I wouldn’t hang Picasso's Guernica in my house even if i had room for it. I’m not saying that art works that examine the darker side of life and human nature are incapable of revealing some aspects of truth, I’m simply saying that I prefer to avoid them. I have a TV and several digital devices that do their best to drag me down the rabbit hole of human weakness, deprivation, hatred, lust, veniality, etc.

OK. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about Beauty. There is a wonderful scene at the beginning of the rather chilling film, Dead Poets Society. Which I do recommend, particularly if you thought Robin Williams only did comedy. The scene takes place in an English lesson when "the boys" are being taught how to evaluate poems by the teacher Williams/Keating will replace - according to a graph on which they are to chart variables like "meter," "length of line," "syllables," to arrive at a numerical indication of "the greatness of the poem." Having spent a few decades in the sometimes strange world of academic prose, this scene is not as bizarre at it seems at first blush but it does fall far afield of my personal process of assessing beauty. My process is almost totally physical and, strangely, could be measured numerically, but not on a chart, but rather by a blood pressure cuff.

I'll give you an example. The other night I was browsing around on my night time ritual Curiosity Stream and happened upon a site called Big Picture Earth. The site features videos of various "neat places" about 30 minutes in length, shot at walking speed, using only ambient sound. I clicked on one that featured a shot of gondolas in Venice, and for the next half hour I could feel my blood pressure drop, as the video walked me through some of my favorite places in La Serenissima - the sovereign state of Venice.

My reaction is similar when I encounter "all things beautiful," be they naturally occurring scenes out in the world, paintings, sculpture, faces, sounds, whatever. I pause. Often with an unintentional, but inevitable quiet inhalation. I smile. And my blood pressure drops. No, I don't have hard data for this phenomenon - but I am going to give it a shot. It is certainly a reaction that seems diametrically opposed to those I have upon encountering the "if it bleeds it leads" mantra of the anti-something social and corporate media.

My own attempts to enable beauty are, as is the case for all of us, constrained by my own abilities. Words are an environment in which I feel comfortable, so I share them here on The Wall. With varying success. Having come to peace with my inability to do representational drawing, instead I expand my doodles and photographs, and then marry them to lush and happy colors, drawn inevitably to the strains of beautiful music; also beyond my abilities - but still able to lower my blood pressure and put a smile on my face.

Icy Child Abuse Pt.2

 Add to the list of abusers who should be punished somehow the media decision makers who allowed their cameras to follow all the devastated young skaters around, and then had the gall to feature it all in prime time. If NBC had tried a little harder I’m sure they could have found an automobile accident or a shooting somewhere they could have featured instead.

Icy Child Abuse

 I have only seen Kamila Valieva skate twice. Both times over the last couple of weeks during the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. She was transcendent. I have been watching Olympic figure skaters for 30 or 40 years, and never before can I recall forgetting to breathe. I am no expert, but my amazement was echoed by those who are covering the event for NBC, at least the first time around. As she prepared for her second short program, the commentators were also unanimous, and vocal, in their opinion that she should not be there. They were silent as she finished. Except for one seemingly irrepressible murmur - I couldn’t identify the voice - “Well, I said she was the best I’ve ever seen.” However, as the camera zoomed in for a screen-filling close-up of Kamila’s face, I could not help thinking, “That is a troubled child.”

In applying Distilled Harmony to this sad event, a number of things become clear. First, Foster Harmony where celebrities are concerned is largely a media issue. At best we have pseudo-social relationships with celebrities. We call them by their first names, even when they have retained a second name. They often encourage these false relationships by forsaking their second name - sometimes all vestiges of their given names. We talk about them as if they were real friends. It creates, if anything, a sense of pseudo-harmony. Enable Beauty is likewise a media creation. Popular music, fashion, etc., are created and distributed via the media by celebrity spokespeople - "influencers." Marketers seek to create new versions of beauty every year. So the first two tenets of Distilled Harmony yield no significant insight when considering the Valieva affair.

The third tenet, Distill Complexity, proves more fruitful. There seems little if any debate over the central issue of the banned substances having been present in the sample attributed to Ms. Valieva in December. Unfortunately, that seems to be the single bit of evidence that remains uncontested. Everything else is up for grabs. Which brings us to the fourth tenet: Oppose Harm, which in this instance can also be read as "who is to blame, and who should punished, and how?"

Again clarity is mostly absent. There are some apparent conclusions. The sample tested positive, therefore Valieva should banned from further participation. Allowing her to continue punishes all the other skaters who are apparently competing without the aid of performance enhancing drugs. Period. However, this is where complexity enters the equation. She is 15, and the various Committees overseeing the sport actually have different rules designed to protect minors. Protect them from who, from what? It would seem to protect them from the very people who made it possible for them to participate in the first place. Their coaches, the Russian Olympic Committee. The same cadre of powerful adults who, if the 2014 games in Sochi and the drug scandal reveled there, have proved that they are willing to keep on cheating until they get caught and even after. These are the people Valieva would have to finger. They appear to be the abusers. Abused children often protect those who abuse them.

Let us think about 15 year-old girls for a minute. Having helped raise a couple of daughters, and having taught thousands just a few years older I have some real world experience here. They are fascinating creatures. They want to be liked. They often demonstrate their love of individuality by mimicking the celebrity models presented in the media. They are easily moved to tears and smiles, mere minutes apart. And these are regular, normal, teenage girls.

Now imagine you happen to have been born with a, perhaps once in a lifetime, set of skating skills. Skills that allow you to leave adults breathless. Skills that hang gold medals around your neck. Skills that cause people to say you might well be the best female figure skater in history. Skills that cause you to be given the best coaches, the best training available. And all you need to do is keep skating, keep doing what you are told. And the world will continue to love you. And you are 15.

And then, in the space of a couple of days it all comes crashing down. You are standing on the ice where a couple of days before the ice skating world was at your feet. Smiling, applauding, loving you. But now they think you are a cheat, a liar. Hating you. And all you did was do what you were told to do. And you are still just 15.

I sincerely hope the coaches and committees that paved Kamila Valieva's path to pinnacle of the ice skating world will be as attentive in the chaos that will undoubtedly continue to swirl around her in the aftermath of these disputed Olympics. Were she my daughter, I would take her someplace tranquil. Someplace quiet. I would take away her phone. I would give her hot chocolate and cookies. Give her Winnie the Pooh books to read. Because she is just 15.

Foster Harmony, 2nd ed

Foster Harmony seems like it should go without saying.  It seems like every culture writes its particular version of this tenet into its various cultural canons. Having been born into middle America in the midst of the 20th century, I was raised with this version, commonly referred to as The Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  Wikipedia tells me that this particular version stems from a couple of places in the Christian New Testament.  But that is far from its singular source.  I have yet to encounter a faith, philosophy, belief system, etc., that does not include this core concept somewhere in the canon of its worldview.  It is hardly surprising that it claims first place among the four tenets of my worldview - Distilled Harmony.

There are a couple of reasons that Foster Harmony is the most important and the most trying of the four tenets.  First is the notion that Foster Harmony is a 24/7, all day everyday objective. It is not a characteristic we can dip into occasionally, when we feel like it, or when we worry that someone is watching or listening. What I mean by that is that we must attempt to make Fostering Harmony a real part of our everyday language and behavior. We need to guard against reacting to, or seeming to condone, the common, daily doses of discord that confront us. From the person who steals your space in the mall parking lot, to the politician or grocery store clerk who informs you that “Those People always do that!” Assuming that you know who “those people” are and what “that” is. It is those snide little pricks of presumed mutual distaste that pop the balloon of harmony. I should point out that this aspect of fostering harmony, because it is so difficult, needs to be seen as a goal. We should not beat ourselves up over occasional, and probably inevitable, slips toward discord.  And it is those slips that reveal a major reason why fostering harmony is so difficult.

Fostering Harmony is a difficult mindset to manifest, because, unless you have been very fortunate, or living in a cave, we have few real models for cultural or intercultural harmony. Far more common, in our nation’s - and our world’s - history, are models for conflict, distrust, war and prejudice - sexism, racism, etc. Even the words of historic pacifists get stolen as motivations for mayhem - holy wars of one strain or another. As I write this the media are all a buzz with several stories: 1) The Olympics, in which the “purity” of international competition unfolds against the threat of one “sort of country” seemingly on the verge of invading another. 2) Suspicion of banned substances being employed by a teenager to gain an advantage. 3) A plethora of stories regarding harassment of some sort or another in a variety of personal, professional and social arenas.

One often feels completely powerless to address this heritage of discord that seems inextricably interwoven with the entire history of our species. So let me posit what might be a helpful first step in helping ourselves down the challenging path to Fostering Harmony: let us try to free ourselves from the frightening notion of “the other.”  Again, a rather simplistic notion: it takes two to have a fight. I am not advocating that one simply backs down from bullies, whether they are on the playground, at the office, or charging up the front steps of the Capitol. But I will address that issue in the fourth tenet, Oppose Harm.  What I am suggesting here is that we avoid our cultural history's inclination to lump people into convenient groups and assign particular characteristics to all members of those groups, and in doing so "demonize" the entire group - make them "the other" whom, again our national and global history tells us, it is OK to demean, incarcerate, or actually kill. Because, somehow, they deserve it.  It is the mindset that underlies all "-ists." Harder, but more harmonic, is the seeking of options to opposition that lead to a third solution which becomes fuller understanding and the chance of win-win.

In closing this particular post let me emphasize a couple of points. Taking a personal role in Fostering Harmony needs to be an objective. It is a slippery slope, narrow path, choose your own descriptor. It is hard. It is often made harder by our failure to recognize discordant inclinations in ourselves. It is so much easier to blame "them" - fill in your own convenient "other." We need to work at Fostering Harmony. 

Distilled Harmony, 2nd ed

It's really not so much a second edition as it is a bit of a refocusing, perhaps a clarification. I have been binging a bit on Curiosity Stream videos that focus on early, say 1400 or so BCE, writings, art and architecture. Most recently a three part series called Genius of the Ancient World that focused on the lives of the Buddha, Socrates and Confucius. But early Islam, Judaism and Christianity, etc., all got their close-ups along the way. What I found fascinating, and frankly depressing, was that many of these faiths, philosophies, belief systems, call them what you will, eventually worked their way around to worldviews similar to the one I advocate in Distilled Harmony, and then promptly chose to behave quite differently than the behaviors seemly demanded by their faith. The bloody battlefields that sadly have become testaments to human history are gruesome reminders of this shared human failing.

I am moved to clarify what I mean by Distilled Harmony by the seeming acceleration of its antithesis in the world around us today. Harmony's antithesis lives under many guises; discord, chaos, intolerance, hatred, deceit. All are simply varying shades of the same dark human inclinations. It is not my intention in these few posts to point accusatory fingers at the individuals or epochs - present or past - who have led us astray. Rather I want to remind us of, and perhaps clarify, the four tenets that form the core of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm.

I will treat each in a separate post. For many of you they will be old friends, for those of you who have joined The Wall more recently, they may help you to understand some of my more oblique musings. 

More. 2nd. ed.

 More  .  . circa  9.19.03

 

More than the finished manuscript

Is the beckoning empty page.

More than the drying canvas

Is the expanse of white.

More than the gleaming sculpture

Is the unformed block of stone.

More than the soaring opus

Is the blank score.

The promise of harmony yet to come

Is sweeter far than all the notes

That have led us to this place and time.

The Subjectivity of Truth

 Interestingly we live in a world where the massive amount of information available to us threatens our ability to discern truth. I found myself in a recent conversation where my honest response to another’s remark was “I don’t believe you.”  Hey, I’m getting up there in years when the old filters don’t work as well as they ought to. Still, I am embarrassed by having made the remark which would probably been better left unsaid. The problem is that the phrase “I don’t believe you” could easily be interpreted to mean “I think you are lying.” . . . 

Slim turned slowly.  A hush fell over the saloon.  “You callin’ me a liar?” Slim stood, without having seemed to move. His hand drifting toward the worn handle of the colt 45 slung with deceptive innocence low on his hip. . .  “Actually, no Slim, What I meant to say was that you, perhaps innocently, prescribe to a difference sense or interpretation of reality than do I.” Slim’s hand flashed like lightning, but not as swiftly as I disappeared beneath the table . . . 

Well, you get the idea. As I thought about it, and I have been, I realized that I really didn’t think my partner in the conversation was lying. “I disagree,” would have been a far more politic and equally truthful response.  But the tenor of current public discourse in America these days has sunk to such deplorable levels that I have found myself thinking more seriously about how does one actually discern truth in the hyper-mediated maelstrom of claim and counter-claim that invade our eyes and ears 24/7?

My current position is uncomfortable: truth is what we decide it to be.  No, I’m not advocating that we throw data, evidence, research and the scientific method out the window.  It is more complicated than that, but not as divorced from that simplistic worldview as I would like it to be. It is easy to take pot shots at sports figures who believe the world is flat, or that “vaccinated” can means something other than having a vaccine injected into your arm, or that the moon landing was staged, and - one would assume - as was the case with all the subsequent space launches by countries, corporations, and the hyper-rich of varying stripes and motivations. But when we dig a little deeper into our own “truths,” life here under the table gets a little less certain. After all, Slim is still out there with his shootin’ iron.

You see I was among those nasty professors who required essays to have footnotes. At this point in time I would like to invite anyone who has graded essays that demanded said footnotes would love to chip in with their own wildest examples: e.g.  “3. This came to me in a dream.” True story, as I live and breathe. Anyhow, the point is that we really do choose what and who to believe. And there are now out there on the internet “sources” to provide support for any, and I do mean any, strange and wild reality or “truth” you wish to cling to.  So what branch out there in the Internet jungle of truth do you want to cling to and why?

I’m not actually asking you to make a list, but I do that from time to time - well, more honesty from year to year, oh, OK, several times each decade.  I am somewhat comforted by the fact that as I grow older there is less variability in the lists, and they seem to reflect an increasingly consistent narrative, a worldview. And, of course, if you have been hanging out here on the Wall for 10 or a dozen years you know that I call my narrative Distilled Harmony, a worldview supported by four pillars or tenets which are, in descending order of import: first, most important, Foster Harmony, in your words, actions, everything. Second, Enable Beauty, again in everything, your the tone of voice and meaning of your words, what you paint, draw, cook, everything. Third, Distill Complexity.  Look for the cleanest, most precise understanding of the questions you face. And forth, Oppose Harm. When all else fails one must confront the people, policies, and practices that are manifested in behaviors that run counter to other three tenets of Distilled Harmony. But, and this is really difficult, you must, in your opposition, still seek to manifest the other three tenets.

I have found, in these monthly, yearly, “decadely,” reviews of my narrative that the components of Distilled Harmony seem to be consistently manifested in the writing, behavior, creative works, language, tone, touch and gaze of the people in my life whom I love and respect. So it seems I share my most central narrative, my most important truths, with those to whom I will always open my door and heart, because I know that no matter how egregious my unfortunate and repeating foibles, they will, in turn, open their doors and hearts to me. And so together we construct trust, forgiveness and truth.

New Gondolas

 OK, just dragging image here from your email:

Now, I'm not going to do anything to it until it appears on blogger. When you get it, try clicking directly on the pic, and see if it expands.

Cheers!

Vegan in a Mason Jar, 2nd ed

Vegan in a Mason Jar?   circa 1.15.04

 

 Maybe it was because I hadn't finished my first cup of coffee. And is coffee good or bad for us this week? I get confused. Anyhow, for some reason the obviously serious story on NPR struck me as very funny. Seems as though a group of folks up in Asheville - North Carolina's version of Soho or The Village - were holding some sort of anti-beef rally. They were mad about mad cow disease. Now, out in South Dakota where a good number of my kin raise beef cattle, this falls under the heading of "Kicking Them When They Are Down" and is considered in bad form. But that isn't where I am headed with this. The story went on to say that the anti-beef protestors were handing out "vegetarian starter kits."

 

Hmmmm, I wonder what comes in a vegetarian starter kit? And what happens once you activate it? I am somewhat familiar with sourdough starter kits. You mix up the ingredients and keep the resulting liquid in a jar in your refrigerator. You can add it to flour to make sourdough, from which you bake bread. Is that the same concept we are following with "vegetarian starter kits?" You mix up the ingredients and keep it in a mason jar in the refrigerator? Then when the mood strikes you, you add it to something and make vegetarians? If it sits a long time do you get vegans? I had this terrible image of digging around in the back of my frig one day and encountering an old forgotten jar of vegetarian starter. I open it and discover that it is stuffed with tiny, incredibly skinny, vegans all shouting "Give us sprouts! Tofu! Tofu!" They swarm out of the jar and rampage through refrigerator flinging all the meat out onto the kitchen floor. "Murderer! Cannibal!" they shriek at me. I slam the door.

Obviously, I need more coffee. And a little breakfast. Eggs. Yeah, eggs. Maybe steak and eggs. Maybe just steak.

Landscape

Landscape

Of course, there is really no such thing as turning off your mind if you have a marker in your hand. I do remember seeing a number of Buddhist monks doing a healing sand painting mandala in the North Carolina Museum of Art a couple of days after 9/11. They seemed able to separate mind and hand - or maybe it was unifying mind and hand. Anyhow, either way the ability was the result of years of training and meditation. I think that train has left for me. Point is that as I was doing my "relax follow the marker cloud" images I naturally began to wonder what might result if I tried to intentionally guide that type of image. I have watched videos of Pollock painting and was unable to discern planning - I have done an attempt to create a Pollock which I may send along if I can find it.

What I am sending here is my attempt to use the clouds process to intentionally create a Landscape. At best I tried to keep the idea of a landscape, hills, rivers, etc., in mind as I moved the initial marker over the page. Same with the color selection. In "Clouds" I used a sort of "dowsing" process. Dowsing for water is a process where you take a forked stick that forms a Y, hold the two ends and walk around the land, when the leading edge dips you have found water. When dowsing for color you sort of defocus your gaze and let your eyes wander over all our markers, when your focus stops you have chosen the next color for the image, you then take the marker and let it wander above the outline image. When it dips you color that portion of the image.

Intentional image is different. You keep you eye on the paper, both in the creation of the outline and the selection of color. I realize that doesn't make much sense. But this is a first attempt. So, ta da, Landscape:

Escaping Genius

.I am just watching a video about Lilias Trotter, the immensely talented artist and long time protege and friend/companion, but most likely never lover of John Ruskin - the English writer, philosopher, art critic, polymath, and grand high influencer of all art in the Victorian era. It is a rather serendipitous video to have chosen for tonight as I have been spending several weeks now using “artists” as the search term for browsing Curiosity Stream.  Naturally, all the A-list artists are there, Van Gogh, O'Keeffe, DaVinci, Monet, Le Brun, Picasso, Rembrandt, etc., and others like Trotter whose names do not fall as trippingly off the tongue. The videos are of varying quality. The best seem to be those produced in France or French-British joint ventures.  Interestingly some of the searches conflated artist and genius, which is to be expected. However, Trotter more than any other, confirms what I often espoused to my students when reflecting on the place that art played in the life of an individual who truly lived the life of an artist. “Art,” I would declare, from my perhaps undeserved, but freely employed role of “the sage on the stage”,  “Is not so much something you chose to do. Rather it is something you come to realize you cannot do without.” 

Trotter, who according to Ruskin could have been the greatest female painter in history, found herself in a double bind. A watercolor genius of the first order, she was also a devout - some might say fanatical - Christian, called to minister to the poorest of the poor. She eventually followed her spiritual calling to become a missionary among the poor in Algeria in 1887. But she never really gave up painting. She kept a journal filled with sketches and watercolors until her death in 1928. She also maintained an illustrated correspondence with Ruskin for more than 20 years. So did she give up her art? In a sense maybe, but perhaps more accurately she married her art to her other great passion, her faith.

Like many things I may have professed throughout my years as a professor, I may have oversimplified my lecture on art. A more accurate assertion could be, to conflate artist and genius myself, that great artists - artists whose works becomes timeless - are geniuses who spend their lives driven by the pursuit of perfection in an art they can never fully abandon. And it is that realization that confirms for me the certainty that I will remain eternally grateful that my DNA unfolded in such a way as to spare me the backhanded blessing of genius. 

I do have some skills that occasionally edge above the middle of the bell-shaped curve, but truth be told, they most often remain in the realm of “art for the artist.” To clarify, creative endeavors can - or so I would profess - broadly be broken into two categories: therapeutic art, art we create for the pleasure, joy, or healing it brings to us; and art that informs, broadens, or advances ART writ large. There is certainly some overlap between the two. Emily Dickinson springs to mind. A poet who wrote, apparently, for the joy and healing it brought her, publishing only a handful of the 1800 or so poems she wrote during her lifetime. It was only later that we discovered the genius of this closet poet who, seemingly unintentionally, advanced the path of big ART.

So where does this leave us in our relationship to art? A bit stranded I would contend. To wander off course a bit, in my years in the classroom of what was largely and erroneously seen as an easy major, Communication, I encountered more than my share of student-athletes. Youngsters with dreams of "the pros" dancing in their eyes. While perhaps a handful realized those dreams to a certain extent, only Russell Wilson, stellar quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, has achieved the level of fame and success of which the others dreamed. One out of the thousands of dreamers who passed through my classrooms. However, it would seem to counter the reasons I put my own dreams of artistic theatrical stardom aside and sought a somewhat smaller stage, to overtly discourage the dreamers out there in my smaller audience.

So I built in a compromise. As communication could lead to a myriad of careers, I had a standard "think past graduation" exercise in my introduction to communication course. Basically the student had to write an essay about the career they intended to pursue after graduation. And list what courses here at State would best prepare them for that career. But it was a two-part question. The second part was "If your ideal career fails to materialize for whatever reason, what is your fall back option that would allow you to still put all your preparation to good use?" One covert motivation for this follow-up question was to give the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, Olympian, Academy Award, Grammy dreamers a chance to think outside their dream.

Still for most of us, following the art that brings us happiness, joy, calm, inner peace, is by far the best path. Do not worry that you will have missed the chance to live out your inner genius. If genius does reside within you, chances are it will reach in, grab you by the scruff of your neck, and shake you until you can see nothing but its burning demands.

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Clouds

 I have been working on "cleaning" the "Gondolas" picture for several days now. I believe I have posted the "pre-cleaning" version of that image here before.  The process is designed to ready that hand-drawn image, which is 10x32, for printing on canvas at about 20x48. Anyhow, "cleaning" entails taking the original into Staples and creating a digital version on their large format scanner. Then I pull that digital version into Photoshop and remove all the little tiny imperfections - blobs of color from the markers - so everything is "perfect." I know, I know a little OCD, but what can you do?  This entails zooming in until I am working at the 2 - 3 pixel level.  If I wasn't a bit crazed before, I found myself in need of a break.

Fortunately there is a good therapy for this. I call it "cloud creation," because it harkens back to something we all did as children. You lie on your back on the ground and look up at the clouds and see what figures you can see. Charles Schultz did a wonderful cartoon on the subject. Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy are gazing up at the clouds and Charlie asks what the others are seeing.  Linus responds with "Well, those clouds over there look like a map of British Honduras in the Caribbean. That cloud over there looks like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculpture . .  .  etc." To which Charlie responds, "Well, I was going to say a saw a ducky and a horsey, but I've changed my mind." 

Cloud creation is sort of like that.  You take a large sheet of drawing paper, I used 14x17 for this example.  You put on some music that you like, take a black marker, and let the marker go wherever it likes. I used a few different kinds on the example because I like having lines of differing widths. Then when you feel like the doodle is done, or the music stops, you take a variety of other colored markers and fill in the spaces your marker created. You may have noticed I did not say "you have created." It is an important difference. Remember cloud creation is an antidote to the pixel level exactitude of "image cleaning."  Cloud creation is sort of like a Ouija board with markers. You just let it happen - no plan, no design, no intention. Just flow. And this is what came out.

Cheers!

 

Love is a Permanent State of the Heart

Once you truly love someone you are never entirely free from that affection.

That may seem a rather surprising statement to make in a blog written by a divorced/remarried man living in a country where the annual divorce rate hovers somewhere between 40 and 50 percent, and according to Project Sanctuary, “on average, nearly 20 people per minute are victims of physical violence by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men.” These media-forward statistics paint a pretty bleak picture for the odds for finding love at all, let alone a permanent version of it, not?

But those of you acquainted with my Distilled Harmony worldview will not be surprised to learn that having looked at love from far more than both sides now I, unlike Joni Mitchell, think I have a better way of looking at love.  And it is a way you can actually play along with. First, you need a balloon. I suggest red, but you can use any color you like. It should be a big balloon and a sturdy one because you are going to fill it up with, what else?, water. (So, weather permitting, you might want to do this outside. Inside, maybe the shower.) But these are simply precautions as the balloon is a model of a metaphor and ideally will not be broken. Now fill the balloon, but only maybe three quarters full, tie it tightly. The idea is that you should be able to squeeze the balloon so that it does not break, but mushes out into different shapes. Try it with your balloon - fun, eh?

Now here is the important part. The balloon represents all the love of which you are capable. But it is only a representation - to be an accurate model it would have to be a balloon without boundaries, because our capability to love is infinite.  It is perhaps easiest to understand the balloon model when we apply it to a couple increasing their family. You have this nice round balloon into which pops a child. So squeeze the balloon in the middle until you have a double sphere balloon. The amount of love - which remember is infinite - doesn’t change it just gets reconfigured. And the same thing happens every time a new beloved enters your life. Your love balloon gets squeezed and a new unique configuration occurs. More kids, more lobes. You meet a new precious person, another lobe is added. Sort of like this but with a much bigger balloon and smaller hand:

But adding a new lob is in itself tricky. In part because we aren't really in control. I wrote back in the late 1990s somewhere in The God Chord that we occasionally meet someone who is singularly in sync with our chord - love or lob at first sight. The contrary is true as well. Fingers on a blackboard. Your balloon is unaffected. The heart wants what it wants - not necessarily what your parents, friends, even you think you want.

In a related point, you will note that the model makes no provision for breakage. For lopping off a lob. For falling out of love. That is because I have come to believe that, from a Distilled Harmony perspective, reducing the expanse of love in our lives is counterintuitive.  Again a song; "Once in love with Amy, always in love with Amy." [Ray Bolger 1949] As we look at our love balloon and squeeze it to welcome new arrivals, various portions expand and contract. The conclusion I draw from that is that once we have loved someone we can never totally “un-love” them. We may come to view them through a haze of anger, disappointment, or whatever. But their little nodule is still out there in the love balloon somewhere, and sometimes it become dominant again. Think about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; Elon Musk and Tulah Riley, Eminem and Kim Scott, etc., etc. Think about you own favorite

 married/divorced/married/divorced friends or celebrities. Celebrities really have it rough. Celebrity itself makes everything more difficult - everyone is watching, attributing bizarre motivations to whatever you do, which makes you more prone to do bizarre things. Nice to be in the shadows, exploring our own lobs - old and new, big and little.

James Taylor sang, “Love’s the finest thing around.” Amen, James. And I, looking back over 73 years of children, friends, wives and lovers, feel that we serve love best by remembering and cherishing all those with whom we shared, and still, in some way, share love.

In The Hall of Forgotten Gods

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First, there is the silence

A different kind of quiet

No joy, no sorrow

Just silence

But - with the memory of sound

Brass cymbals

Chanting

Murmurings in unison

Of many different tongues

Choral supplications

Quiet prayers with

The clack of

Prayer wheels spinning

The flutter of

Sacred flags in mountain air

But now

In the simple silence

There is no color

Only  - the memories of hues

Purple velvet garb

Multicolored icons

Crimson berettas

Saffron robes

Black vestments

All flickering in the glow

Of many candles

Lining walls or

Perched in candelabras

Of many names

With differing histories

But burnishing each tint

With a sacred golden glow

All now mired

In the ethereal space

Of no color at all

There are no faces

Of believers

Of any faith or friendship

The want of color

Has already banished

The rainbow of races

Once present in every

Imaginable sacred space

Gone as well the fabulous

Sculpted features of the

Faithful whose countenances

And representations

Graced stone and canvas

Carved and painted

The air itself

Is without identity

Incense and woodsmoke

Mingled aromas

Of sacred feasts

Are as absent as

Sound, color, and visage

And so this absence beyond

Absence collapses

Further still

Becoming singularity

Past time and knowing

And the singularity waits

Until

Called by

Some unknown

Herald

To return

To an expanding

Swift

Beyond possible

To reclaim

Light and

Sound and

Sensing and

Being and

Joy and

Love and

And the realization

Of true deity

Contained within

Each individual

Wrapped

With humility

Each entitled

To

A throne

Until around

The edges

Of this

Most fortunate

Recreation

Creeps

The cautious

Hopeful tapping

Of realized prayer

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A New Year's Toast

Another New Year's Toast

I hope you had or are having a lovely new year's day. I'm going to send you a couple of bottles of wine - well at least pictures of them. I would like you to see if can see a difference between the two.  The first is the result of simply scanning a drawing in a large format scanner.  The second is the result of a "cleaning" of the first image. That means taking the initial image back into Photoshop and working on the image at the two or three pixel level to remove the little smears or blanks that are visible at that level.  The differences are visible in Photoshop and would be easily seen as a print.

I am curious to know how they appear via blogger. Perhaps the blogger app just compresses the images to the same level.

Here we go: