The Gray Flannel University

.
I spent 5th and 6th grade at the American International School in Vienna, Austria.  During those years, 1959 – 1961, Vienna was still remaking itself after the physical and social devastation of World War II.  One of my favorite places was the Secret Garden that surrounded the ruins of a grand mansion down the block from our apartment building.  The house was a gutted shell, but, if you climbed the still intact walls, you found yourself amid thigh-high grasses surrounding the cracked marble-lined pools that captured rainwater.  Rambling roses draped otherwise immodest statuary.  The city was like that, pocked with ruins, yet still beautiful.

Through my young eyes the citizens appeared grimly determined; gray somehow.  The pace was stolidly slow and steady, measured, orderly – as though by working hard and “staying between the lines” a person could still find a way to the glittering future that had inexplicably descended, with ashes, into ashes.  There was still, after all, the utterly entrancing Staatsoper, with crystal chandeliers, seemingly stories high, hung amid the voices of angels.  Maybe one was supposed to keep your head down, but your eyes and ears in the heavens.

Perhaps it was the fact that my school was located in the heart of the city, that, we too, found ourselves in an orderly, controlled and measured environment.  For example, when we took a test the results were posted the next day outside the classroom door – by name, starting with the best grade and descending to the worst.  Black lines marked the cutoff for each letter grade.  A brusque red line defined one’s slide into failure.  The laudatory individualized marginalia of “good effort,” and “like what you are doing here” were decades away.

It was, then, with a strange feeling of déjà vu that I read a recent email:

"Each year, the Chancellor's Office requests an Annual Report from the College.  In the past, the Dean has included highlights from each department/unit in the report.  The College will continue that tradition. Therefore, the Dean has asked that each faculty member complete the attached Productivity chart. The Head will use the charts to create a department annual report, which will be sent to the Dean.  Please send your completed productivity chart back by May 1.  If you will put your information into the correct boxes it will make it easy to copy and paste it into the final chart document."

I opened the Productivity Report file and found a form that had a variety of columns: Books, Articles, Book Reviews, etc., even Poems and Short Stories. It was, despite lacking a column for Whimsical Paintings, or Pooh Bear Hums, quite a comprehensive list.  Nonetheless there were a couple of chilling aspects to it.  First, all of my colleague’s names were printed in one column, meaning, of course, that we were to enter our “productivity items” into our line.  Second, it was clear that we were simply to enter numbers into each “productivity box”.

I found those aspects depressing and disconcerting because I could see in my mind’s eye a list of names with numbers after them; black lines marking the cutoff for each letter grade, and a brusque red line defining one’s slide into failure.  The fact that the form mandated the use of numbers divorced from any reference to content, title, or venue, smacked of “keeping your head down and staying between the lines.”  It seemed a gray depiction of my professional world.  Keep turning out widgets that can be counted.  Count your particular widget and put it in a box.

I would be far less disturbed if I thought this chart were the bizarre construction of misguided administrators in my university.  Then I could simply shake my head and wait for them to fade away into the inevitable mist of retired administrators.  My fear, alas, is that this list is the norm, not the exception.  It is an accounting solution to the vexing national problems of “assessment” and “accountability.”  Legislators, alumni, Promotion and Tenure Committees; they all need information to make decisions that are vital to both universities and the constituencies they serve.  This method provides numbers that seem to inform those processes.

I say, “seem to inform” with great intentionality.  The problem is that when data are gathered, people will proceed as if those data had meaning.  Our productivity chart, and the others like it that I am sure are being employed at most universities, generate data that will easily be used to equate “numbers in a box” with “productivity” at a university.  I would assert that any such relationship is coincidental.  The flaws in such thinking are myriad.  Let me just note a few of the most obvious.  An article is not an article is not an article.  Some journals are wonderful founts of information and insight, others are “huckster-esque” resume building buffoons.  Still a publication in each warrants a mark in the same box.  And now, how does one measure the academic worth of a poem?  Is it the same as an article? Surely not a book – I mean, think of all the words in a book.  Poems have far fewer.  Are they of similar import? Let me count the ways .  .  .  .

The point is simply this: in the university we do not make widgets.  We are charged with nurturing the flames of curiosity, knowledge and creativity.  The product of our labors is to enable the more measurable productivity of others.  I realize that such a perception is laughably quaint in the modern university.  Which is one reason why, to quote Maurice Chevalier in Gigi,  “I’m glad I’m not young anymore!”
.

It's Not You, It's Me!

 .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding Your Fulcrum

 .

I usually hate it when the right words are already taken, but this time it may have been helpful.  It started when I stopped listening to music while doing my evening Reike.  You see, for the last 30 years or so I have done the same ritual every night before I go to sleep. It is a truncated Reike session that helps me relax and ease into sleep.  Until a week or so ago I would perform the ritual - which involves placing my hands on my head and slowing my breath - while listening to music.  A form of meditation, if you will.

Interestingly, I had noticed that there were times when the music seemed to run counter to relaxation.  You see, you are supposed to shift your hand position every three minutes, and it seemed that knowing where I was in the music would make me impatient to get relaxed - and yes, I realize how oxymoronic that is.  Anyhow, we have one of those “nature sound” generator things by the bed.  It will do rain, surf, wind, summer night, etc., etc.  We often run it at night and so I started just doing my Reike/relaxation/meditation to “summer night.”  It seemed to work quite well, which, naturally, got me thinking.

Thunderstorms, real ones with rain and wind and all that are incredibly somniferous events for me.  Love that word, "somniferous," sleep-inducing; the word itself is somniferous, I’m yawning here typing it.  But again, I digress.  Thunderstorms put me to sleep.  But then I thought about it a bit more.  They don’t actually put me to sleep – they relax me so completely that sleep often follows, but not always.  Same with crickets at night, some music, and, when I was young, the murmur of my parents voices drifting in my window screen as they talked out on the porch.  Some sounds seem to transport me to specific and utterly tranquil places.  The whole storm thing whisks me away to a lake I do not recognize from my “real” life, but is as familiar to me as any place I have ever been:

It is a Northern lake, similar to, but not specifically from, places I have visited in Northern Michigan and Wisconsin.  There is a boathouse rocking between two flanking docks, fragile yet unquestionable in its security from the wind and rain.  I am in a hammock, gently rocked, but not chilled, by the cool breeze. I know it is not real because there are no mosquitoes.  Still, I am quite content to rest wrapped in serene “somniferousness.”

Certain smells – lilac for example, no, not lavender, lilac – does the same thing.  Comfort foods are comfort foods because they, too, bring comfort and that feeling of somniferous well-being.

There is obviously a chord theory/universal resonance issue going on here.  After all, if it is a theory of everything, it has to be a theory of everything.  So, Chordman, how do you explain these seemingly spontaneous onsets of somniferous well-being?  I’m glad you asked.

This is, however, where I began to run into the problem of the right words having already been hijacked.  The thought that originally came to me was that this phenomenon was a wormhole notion.  Wormholes are tunnels through spacetime that allow for nigh unto instantaneous movement across light years of distance.  Spontaneous onsets of somniferous well-being could be similar shortcuts to harmony.  One cuts through lengthy sessions of meditation, reflection, etc., and moves directly to a centered sense of well-being.  Hence, these paths transcend the normal spiritual pathways to enlightenment – they are transcendent.  So I originally thought to call them “transcendors.”  Unfortunately I run into a lot of semantic issues if I follow that path because this is precisely where most of the words have been claimed by other “theories of everything.”  Transcendent, transcendental, transformative, -- all are the “property” of some other worldview.  So even if I could lay claim to transcendors, it would probably seed more confusion than clarity.

I was also having problems with the word “wormhole,” I just don’t like it.  I know, I know – beyond trivial.  But universal harmony asserts that the “thing” is a complete totality – the painting is the wood, the canvas, the paint and the varnish, in addition to the thoughts, emotions and the brushstrokes of the artist.  The map is a real component of the territory, the word is an important aspect of the thing.  So the word “wormhole” had to fit the phenomenon being expressed, and it didn’t.  “Holy Dune, Batman!  Would you look at the size of that wormhole!”  I just couldn’t go there.  So potential confusion in the transcendent camp and a trivial sense of discord with the word wormhole sent me poking around for better discourse to explain the phenomenon in question.  Here’s what I came up with.

A wormhole asserts a movement from one point in space-time to another.  The different locales in the universe, particularly when observed from points removed from the wormhole, lie at great distance from one another.  However, universal harmony asserts that the universe is a single harmonic whole, so it follows that discord is resolved by shifting perspective, not location.  Harmony, if you will, is in the mind of the beholder and is not dependent upon the location of the observer in the cosmos.  Hence, moments of somniferous well-being are functions of perspective, not location.  I need not scour the ends of the earth to find the lake of harmony whose shores welcome me each night, it is always there in my head.

So the various triggers of somniferous well-being do not, wormhole-like, take me anywhere. Rather, they alter my perception of the space I currently occupy. They enable and affirm my recognition of the harmonic universe that surrounds me.  They provide balance.  And, ah ha, that calls forth another concept.  When we think about Archimedes and his lever to move the earth, we do tend to get overwhelmed by the lever.  That is understandable, the scale of the thing would be awesome.  We think less about the fulcrum.  Yet, obviously, without the fulcrum, a lever – no matter how long - is just a board.  It is the fulcrum that enables balance.  Shades of playgrounds past; the yelling softens as light mellows through recess dust. Then, carefully, there is neither teeter nor totter, set the table; there is balance, there is harmony.

So, I have come to this – the thunderstorm, the lilacs, the crickets, some music, and maybe grilled cheese sandwiches – these are my existential fulcra.  They balance my life, they shift my perspective in ways that allow me to simply “be” there in the midst of harmony; calm, balanced and relaxed.  How did Simon and Garfunkel put it?  “All dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.”  Furthermore, to the extent that constructed representations of those fulcra are accurate; the sounds in the “sleep machine” or lilac candles or infusers, they too can become fulcra, balancing and relaxing, affirming harmony.
.

Mural Musing #5

.

Finnish Ain’t No Language in Europe!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.

Mural Musing #4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mural Musing #3

.
Buckets and Brooms

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

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


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

“Tommy said he came from New Jersey.”

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

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

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

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

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

Mural Musing #2

.
Drawing on the Wall

Oft-times, when the four of us are pushed back from the table, enjoying the evening winding down, one of us will inquire, rhetorically, “I wonder what the sheet metal workers are doing tonight?”

For a younger crew, it would be a query in more-than-questionable taste.  However, when you consider the 200-odd years of life pulled up around the table, the shading becomes more thankful than demeaning.  Deprivation in postwar Europe, daybreak - and into the evening - stints running a restaurant, lonely watches in the bowels of an aircraft carrier, mind-numbing hours at a grinding wheel in a noisy factory – we have, collectively, “been there and done that.”  We actually know what it is like to fall into bed at the end of a long day of hard, physical labor.  We respect and appreciate the "daily grind" that is necessary to sustain the world in which we live.  So, for us, the refrain “I wonder what the sheet metal workers are doing tonight?” is a grateful acknowledgment that, while no one knows what tomorrow may bring, for tonight at least, study and work and luck have combined to bring us to the easier lives that we enjoy and appreciate.

All of which is prologue to my assertion that drawing on the wall is part of the 'sheet metal work' of painting a mural.  It is, in theory, not all that hard.  You begin by taking the image to be transferred onto the wall and laying a grid over it.  OK, that’s not difficult, especially for a Photoshop geek like me.  The process involves digitizing the image that is to become the mural.  Then you look at its dimensions in pixels, and compute the size of the squares you want to form the grid on the image.  For us, the scanned image was 4000 pixels and the wall was 10 feet on a side.  Nice numbers because that meant that if you constructed a grid of squares that were 400 pixels on a side, you would have squares that would correspond to 1 square foot of the final mural.  So, again in Photoshop, you create a square that is 400 pixels on a side and save it as a “pattern.”  You open the reference image, create a new layer and “fill” it with your pattern, which gives you your image with a grid, and Ta! Da! Here it is!

OK, so now I have this cool image in my computer but still have no answer to the question, “Have you begun to draw on the wall?”  To move from digital space to the actual wall, it is essential that you create a grid to the wall.  We did that with a large level and straight edges and T-squares of a variety of sizes.  And that, of course, brings us back to the star-studded walls pictured in the last post.  Once we had located the corner of each square, we stuck a star at the intersection.  That gave us a foot square grid on the wall that corresponded to the image with the 400 pixel grid. 

Still, you sense the problem do you not?  One image is a picture on a 14” x 17” piece of paper.  The "target" is a 10’ x 10’ blank wall with stars stuck on it.  I'm looking for the twain to meet here, and the solution is not immediately obvious.  I searched the wall in vain for an “insert image” button.  Nothing.  I searched Photoshop for a “paste image to wall” function.  Again, nothing.  It soon became clear that this was the point where I was supposed to “draw on the wall.”  I called Paul.

“What should I use to draw on the wall?” I asked, deciding to stay with the basics.

“Do you have a kumquat?” he asked.  Sometimes Paul’s rather quirky sense of humor is one of his most endearing characteristics.  This was not one of those times.

“No, but I have a couple of avacados,” I replied.  Two could play at quirky.

“Well, use those if you can’t find a pencil.”

“A regular pencil?”

“Yes, in lieu of fruit.”

Now, I know the general concept that lies behind the grid method of enlarging an image.  You don’t draw the whole thing all at once; you do it a square at a time.  Transferring the contents of the small square into the big square.

“So how do you replicate the little square in the big square?” I asked.

“You look at the little square, and sketch the stuff in the little square into the big square.  I usually work with an area about the size of a card table top .  .  .  .”

It should be clear by now that Paul and I are bringing very different skill sets to this project.  I had no idea what he was talking about.  It was as if I had said to him, who has never to my knowledge turned on a computer, “Take that picture on your easel, digitize it and upload it to the client.”  We were talking different languages and I was obviously on my own. Back to Photoshop.

I decided to copy each section of the grid and turn it into a separate image.  This, for example, is square 56:

Then you add a layer to the image and, using your graphics tablet, you trace the outlines of the major features of the square and note the color and shading characteristics, like this:

Finally you remove the actual image behind the tracing and you get an image that looks like a paint by numbers kit, like this:

So cool! But now I had to print the squares on 12 x 12 inch sheets of paper.  Well, wander through your neighborhood art supply store and you will discover that this is not a standard size.  You have to go to 14x17 to get 12 inches on a side, and then you cut the rest away.  There were 100 squares – I figured my paper cost at about 2.5 million dollars.

However, in the garage we had several stacks of blank newsprint left over from packing when we made our escape from the loft.  I discovered that a little work with a large T-square, a metal straight edge, and my trusty Excel knife would yield 4 12x12 sheets from a single sheet of newsprint.  More amazing was the fact that the rather flimsy paper would feed through my Canon i9900 printer.

This is probably a good time to mention that it is always a bad idea to think about how much effort and time will go into any large creative project.  Focus on the fun and the long-range goal, and the actual number of lines you have to trace, draw, and incise, will fade from terrifying to a minor inconvenience.

So, following that process of selective 'effort denial",  not too many hours later I was able to tape images up on the first wall, matching the squares on the grid image with their appropriate “star corners” on the wall.  When you do that you get a “hanging paper” version of part of the mural, like this:

The next step is to gently lift each paper square and mark, with a kumquat, avocado or pencil, the points where lines meet the edges of the squares.  With those "anchor points" it actually does become possible, using the time-honored "peek and sketch" method, to put the content of the enlarged small squares on the paper, into their corresponding large squares marked on the wall.  It looks like this:

I have done that to a large portion of the first wall.  Tomorrow, Paul arrives with paint, brushes, etc., to inspect my work and begin putting paint on the wall.  Fingers crossed!
.

Mural Musing #1

.
“So, have you started drawing on the wall yet?” he asked. The very idea was absurd, and just a bit frightening.  To understand why, you must return with me to begin at the beginning .  .  .  .

When you look around inside our home, you see more art than wall, shelf or table top.  Art is interesting; blank surfaces are not.  Although we have never really discussed the idea, it is obvious that we share the notion that one’s home should be a visual adventure – well, maybe not an adventure.  In his memoir, The Education of a Wandering Man, Louis L'Amour asserts that "adventure" is simply a romantic word for troubles in the past.  Trouble becomes an adventure only when it is over and one is safely home again.  So, let us say, rather, that we believe one’s home should be a visual feast – a morsel here, a main course there, dessert across the room; but never the dull expanse of an empty plate.  We like living in space that engages the roaming eye, where an unexpected dialogue begins with every glance.

Murals and frescoes are the natural extensions of that inclination - wrap around art, if you will.   I have twice completely covered the walls of small rooms with murals.  Delightful experience.  Varied outcomes.   Additionally, we like trompe l’oeil.  I mean it falls naturally within the oeuvre . Why not have a wall that is a painting that “tricks the eye” into thinking that it is neither wall nor painting?  Besides, our front door opens right onto a small entry foyer that steps up into the living room past two doors – a powder room and a closet.  It has always felt a touch cramped. So nibbling in the back of our head has always been the thought, “What better place than the foyer to make walls disappear into a painting of somewhere else?”  The images below are of the "pre-mural" foyer.  Work has, however, already begun, as can be seen by the little star stickers on the walls.  Their purpose will become obvious over time :-)

There were, however, a couple of major considerations.  First, done well, trompe l’oeil is very cool – almost transformational.  Done poorly, it looks as if a nine-year old Jackson Pollack has been turned loose with magic markers and way too much chocolate. And when you actually paint something on the wall – well, it’s not like you can move it into another room. There it is.  The two murals I have done were in playful spaces, and even there were short-lived.  This is the first –

It was done five or six years ago in the powder room of an art gallery, in which I was a partner.  The gallery was a neat idea, but never actually opened.  I haven’t gone by to see what became of the space.  I sincerely doubt the mural remains.  Here is the second –

This was done in one of the bathrooms in the loft where Christine and I lived for a short while just after we were married.  The whole loft experience we attribute to aliens beaming strange messages into our brains.  We were able to unload it shortly before the recent funky mortgage induced financial meltdown.  Strangely, the buyers requested I return the bathroom to basic, boring, white.

Our current residence is more formal - definitely not funky.  A mural in this environment needs to be done by a “real artist” in a fine arts, primarily representational, style.  It is far beyond my playful attempts.  Unfortunately, a 10 x 10 foot mural by a real artist would cost about a year’s salary.  So our trompe l’oeil foyer remained a recurring daydream – until recently.

You see, among our dearest friends are Paul and Kiki Minnis, and Paul is one of them there "real artists."  I mean this is an incredibly talented guy whose paintings hang in museums, galleries and private collections throughout the country.  His pots are similarly honored, and he has recently taken to building classical guitars – in his spare time, when he isn’t providing the music with his accordion, which he plays in restaurants and dance halls around town – he once played his beloved squeezebox in white tie and tails with the North Carolina Symphony orchestra.  So far as I can tell, the only indication that he is 15 years my senior lies in the fact that one night when we were all sitting around after dinner, drinking wine and telling lies, I mentioned the mural concept and he said, “That’s interesting.”  Talk about your senior moment of epic proportions!

Paul has painted murals before – the 200-foot long "sky mural" in the American Airlines terminal here in Raleigh is his work.  But for some reason, the idea of our little mural, running up the stairs and across two doors appealed to him.  The idea festered for a few months, in his mind and ours.  We finally decided to ask Paul to recommend one of his students who might be willing to talk with us about our project.  We assume that the aliens were beaming messages into his brain that night because he said, “You know, we could do this together.”

Several more dinners and a lot more wine later, we agreed to enter into this project.  We would provide the materials, food, praise and solace; he would provide the artistic talent, and I would become his apprentice/slave/gofer, etc., etc.

Not long after that night, we were over at Paul and Kiki’s for dinner [yes, we do spend a lot of time eating dinner together] and he asked us to step out into his studio to take a look at some “concept sketches.”  We were thrilled, and eventually the maestro settled on the image below as the one he wanted to paint:

It is the creation of that mural that I will chronicle in the Mural Musings portion of The Wall.  I hope you enjoy the journey.  All of which, of course, takes us back to the beginning.  .  .  .

It was a couple of weeks after Paul had given me the “concept drawing,” and I had stopped by their house, which is close to campus, to share a small Codder and wait for the traffic to clear.  We gathered around the table in the kitchen, shamelessly feeding the dog people food and quietly sipping our beverages when he said, “So, have you started drawing on the wall yet?”  It was what I believe football coaches refer to as a “gut check” moment.  We’ll see how it goes .  .  .  .
 .

Art Show Orphans

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

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

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

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

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

More orphans in the making, thank goodness.
.

Alchemy

.
I stand no longer so inclined,
Whippet thin against the wind,
Thwarting winter’s slated blast,
With no succor save my skin.

It is for those of fewer years,
To call dark shades out on the field.
And there contest with might and mind
Until the villain’s forces yield.

To such clashes, high and fierce,
Upon my youth, I did aspire.
But now my passions wind their way
To comforts calm, by evening fire.

Grazing on the grate of life,
The memories of flame do dash.
Work alchemy of sweet repose,
Weave blankets soft from oak to ash.
.

Picking Up Stones

.
Last week, down the road from here a piece, over in Alexander County, a miner named Terry Ledford pulled a 310 carat emerald out of the dirt.  It reminded me of The Big Rock Show.

I am not sure exactly when Dan and I curated The Big Rock Show.  I suspect it was the summer of 1958, our tenth summer.  I pick that particular summer because in the summer of 1959 my family moved to Vienna, Austria, and shortly thereafter I became smitten with Patricia Miller – a green-eyed, fifth-grade temptress whose father had just been transferred in from Paris.  Hence, I choose 1958 because I recall a languid summer on the calmer side of adolescence, when girls were minor irritations on the road of life.

The Big Rock Show capped an extended exercise in suburban fieldwork.  Dan and I started out excavating promising gullies in the alley and exposed ravines in a local park in search of, well, rocks.  This entailed digging and other forms of manual labor that, as our later lives have made clear, were not skill sets destined for either of our futures. Hence, the enterprise lagged. However, we soon discovered that a local church had just resurfaced their parking lot with the very artifacts we sought – rocks.  Truckloads of rocks; flints, granite, maybe jasper, and the much-prized rose quartz with enclosures of garnet.  I do not actually recall how we identified the stones – but we were enchanted by the rocky rhetoric.

We hosed the dust off our finds, polished them as best we could with rags from the basement, and glued them onto large pieces of cardboard. These we displayed in the garage, appropriately labeled and priced.  The pieces too small for display were heaped in a plastic dishpan next to a sign: Free Samples.  I believe we priced the larger pieces in a range from a nickel to a quarter, with the truly grand samples marked “Not for sale.”  I do not recall if we sold any.  Entrepreneurial success has also eluded us.

But, we too, unearthed an emerald that summer. One that came from sunlight streaming through deep green leaves of maple, from fresh cut grass, and from time that meandered endless and forgiving.  We won no ribbons, no one videotaped our endeavors, and there was no “after The Big Rock Show pizza party.”  We just rode our bikes all over town in pursuit of the rare rocks of Springfield, and ended the days drinking Frosty root beer as evening faded into night and lightening bugs lit The Big Rock Show.
.

An Inclination to Laughter

 .

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

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

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

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

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

Wormholes of Wonder

.
As long as we are doing spooky physics – here’s another thought that shoulders its way into my consciousness occasionally.  In much of what I read out there in “Spookyphysicsland” I encounter the notion that in the grand [and modest] scheme of things, size is unimportant.  Thresholds seem to be germane - the event horizon of a supermassive black hole, the vibration rate of a string – thresholds, yes, important; size, not so much so.

OK, so consider yourself as a fixed vantage point.  With telescopes of all stripes we can peer into the vastness of space – a “zoom out” of inconceivable proportions.  Massive structures, millions of light years across, and billions of light years “away.”  Now, come back to yourself and turn the observation inward, “zoom in” – looking within toward the incredible tininess of strings perhaps eventually observable with Hogan’s Noise [I’m still not sure how something that has been around since the birth of the universe gets named for one guy – that’s always bothered me – but I digress, again.] Still, looking inward, at structures possibly as small as the outward view is huge; who is to say that we are encountering a different reality? Physics should be physics everywhere right? Symmetry?

If it is all one continuum, and "human-sized" sits toward the middle of the scale, that’s when things could get really spooky.  If one explanation for nothing coming out of black holes is that everything is being funneled out the “other side” into another universe, could that not be happening on our inward journey as well?  Maybe tiny black holes in the brain through which little grains of consciousness slip into different or parallel universes? Are dreams fantasies about this universe or fractured glimpses of another? And can we imagine the exportation of our internal maladies?  Supernovae as cosmic heartburn? Colic in the star-birthing regions of space? Can a galaxy get the swine flu? Hallucinate?

Ah, weirdness – ya gotta love it!
.

Entangled Poetics

.
I thrashed around most of last night in a state of vague fascination.  I was, for the most part, asleep.  I think.  Anyhow, I had been reading an article on quantum computing in Science News.  Seems as if folks at Harvard University and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia are actually making strides towards building such a beast.  That is certainly enough to engender intrigue, but it isn’t what got my sheets in a twist.  It was the whole idea of entanglement.

Entanglement is that part of spooky quantum physics that says that that two or more particles can become "entangled."  When that happens the particles “know” what is happening to their “entangled others” even if they are separated in space.  You do one thing to one of the entangled particles and all the others immediately react as if they had been acted upon – no matter where they are.  I know, I know – why do you think Einstein called it “spooky”?

Naturally, that got me thinking about poetry.  I wondered if emotions, sensations, experiences – all that good grist for the poet’s mill, get entangled with clusters of words and phrases.  Obviously that kind of phenomenon lies at the center of literary clichés – I mean where would “night” be without “dark” and “stormy”?  But could it play a role in good writing as well? 

There is another physics thought – supersymmetry.  Fortunately, or un-,  depending on your perspective, supersymmetry remains illusive in the lab.  But essentially it asserts that everything has a partner; that every “one” is balanced by an “other.”  Yeah, I agree, very Zen science.  The question is this: Is “one” experience balanced by a specific “other” expression?

Painting with the palette of entanglement and supersymmetry, is it not logical to assume that a natural and powerful relationship exists between experiences and their expression?  And wouldn’t that relationship be dependent upon the individual expressing the experience?  Aren’t writers always agonizing about finding “their voice”?  And once they find that “voice” don’t they keep singing the same song? And isn’t it our attraction to that “voice” that brings us back to their music, novels, paintings, poetry?  And don’t we have “issues” when they change?

Does all that, then, make our creative task determining, acquiring and utilizing the expressive symbols and constructions that best balance our experiences?  If so, then there is no one perfect sonnet, sketch or solo – but there is a perfectly harmonic expression of every experience for each individual.  Seeking them seems a daunting challenge – but then so is building a quantum computer.
.

Of A Certain Age

,
Men of A Certain Age concluded its first season yesterday – at least I think it did.  Well, to be honest with you, I hope it did.  I watched the first couple of episodes and then we agreed that it was a show that my wife would record to watch while I was doing something more important, clipping my toenails, cleaning out the microwave after that unfortunate incident with the barbeque sauce, stuff like that.

Here is the issue.  Men of A Certain Age has nothing to do with men.  I suspect that it has a lot more to do with women, of a wide variety of ages, who are in some kind of relationship – wife, friend, daughter, lover, whatever – with a man of a certain age.  MOACA is a really good representation of how men handle life’s complexity – but only if men were women.  MOACA is a chick flick.  It presents a “truth” that some women – apparently those between 25 and 54 - believe about MOACA.  For men it is a touch unrealistic.  In a way it reminds me of that Jack Daniels commercial where the guys are renting puppies to hit on women.  It is a great idea – but men would never think of it.

In another way MOACA is kind of creepy.  Again to invert the model, it is like watching professional female impersonators.  They are beautiful and seductive – but there is just something “off” about them.  The men of MOACA are sympathetic characters, and one can certainly empathize with the issues they confront.  Yet, as a man, you watch them and think back on similar conversations you have had with your male friends – and then you realize you haven’t.  MOACA more accurately reflects conversations you have occasionally found yourself having with women – rarely with positive results.  The phrase “How can you say that?” springs to mind.  So when the MOACA protagonists share those meaningful moments, I get those “weird female impersonator” vibes – something is just “off.”

But the show may well be back next cycle [who knows when that really is – but that’s a different issue].  It does fairly well with the 25-54 demo, 1.7 to 2 million viewers per episode - fairly good cable numbers.  Which may explain my problems – I aged out of that demographic group a few years ago.  Hopefully someone is busy working on my show – Men Past a Certain Age.
.

Pen to Paper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Distillations Part 6

.

The Soul

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

. 

The Early Multiverse

.

RL Schrag 2009

.

Distillations Part 5

.
The Self

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

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

.

Self Portrait

. 

RL Schrag 2003

Distillations Part 4

.

Oppose Harm

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

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

.

The Musician

RL Schrag 2001

Distillations Part 3

.

Enable Beauty

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

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

.

Off Ocracoke, NC

RL Schrag 2003

.