I'll have Beauty - Hold the Beast

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The second tenet of Distilled Harmony is "Enable Beauty."  I occasionally need to point out - to myself as well as others - that it is not "Enable Art."  

I am on a wide variety of “art” lists, so, throughout the day, dozens of images of “artworks" vie for attention upon my screen.   

The images reflect an incredibly “yin yang” perception of the world.  And if you want to fall into a really deep rabbit hole, google “yin yang.” I did.  When I came up for air, the definition that seemed to stick with me was one that asserts that the concept grew out of observations of nature in which '"Yin" originally referred to the shady side of a slope while "yang" referred to the sunny side.”  Both were necessary for a balanced existence.  The Star Wars catalogue sharpens the divide somewhat, splitting "The Force" which drives existence into the Jedi’s Light or Good side, and the Dark Side of the Sith which reflects Evil.  But that is another rabbit hole for another time. The point is that “art” can focus our attention on either the light or the dark side of existence with equal facility.  

If one aspect of my psyche has remained relatively constant as I approach the beginning of my 70th year [for those of you who know me well and are scratching your heads, technically, you begin your 70th year when you turn 69] it is that I do not “do" dark.  This is a characteristic - perhaps genetic, if my older daughter can be used as evidence - born of a belief that “real life" provides more than enough evidence for the Dark Side.  Hence I have no need to explore its artistic representations. That attitude reflects a kind of hypersensitivity to those narratives that depend upon the existence of violence, hatred and evil to make the protagonist necessary - but then strangely allow the protagonist to behave in precisely the same manner as the villain, the sole difference being that the protagonist is on “our side.” So violence and mayhem are acceptable if exercised in the name of “good.”  Unless, that is, you just don’t do dark. 

In the spirit of full-disclosure, I need to confess that I have come to enjoy some “dark side” narratives, both in terms of mystery novels, detective TV shows, etc.  But only those in which the “fiction” is completely obvious.  When the darkness begins to seem “real,” asserting that evil really does lurk around every corner - or when children or dogs are put in harms way - I tune out, usually literally.

OK, to circle back to Enable Beauty.  When you encounter artistic representations of the dark side you can simply put down the book, walk out of the movie, or turn off whatever “digital device” you employ to stream your entertainment. But the artifacts - the pictures, paintings, sculpture, etc., with which you choose to surround yourself - on your walls, table tops, bookcases, etc.,  - these create the world in which you live.  I simply cannot understand why one would choose to “do dark” in that self-constructed world. Therefore, I find it remarkable that any of the dark images that parade across my screen in the name of art find a home anywhere. Perhaps the very wealthy would purchase those dark works in the spirit of social or political solidarity and put them in a closet somewhere. But display them so they would greet you everyday? More than a little creepy.

It is undeniable that the “beast” side of art as a medium for social protest has a long and storied history.  One of my "art sites" - Artsy.net - recently ran an editorial discussing why Picasso's Guernica retained its powerful anti-war message 80 years after its creation. Critics continue to explore the bizarre imagery of Hieronymus Bosch 600 years after the artist's death. I am not about to fling myself into either of those discussions. My question is far less complex: Would you want to hang Guernica or Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights in your home? Assuming, of course, that you had the significant amount of wall space they both require? 

The question is not one of the works' place in art history. The question is the place of the images' place in your head.  These are dark works. To shoehorn them into a definition of "beauty" would require significant intellectual contortions.

The second tenet - Enable Beauty - is closely tied to very measurable reactions when viewing the artifacts: your pulse eases, blood pressure drops, you smile. You become calm.  Your interaction with the work is pleasurable. Allowing yourself time and space for these observations, surrounding yourself with such works, is to enable beauty.

There is, of course, the other side of the equation: the role of the artist as creator as opposed to consumer.  When we doodle or draw or paint or sculpt or write, we do so with some intent.  Again yin and yang provide alternate pathways. Yin may well “rage rage against the dying of the light!”  But remember that Dylan Thomas also wrote in Under Milkwood: "It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.”  

It is easy to imagine Thomas raging his way through a bottle of single malt as he crafted Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. But the same artist would, it seems, experience a significant drop in blood pressure when penning Under Milkwood or A Child’s Christmas in Wales. 

The point is simply this: The second tenet of Distilled Harmony points to beauty, whether we are the creator or the consumer. Like everything in Distilled Harmony the objective is harmony, not discord.  Distilled Harmony does not advocate a gullible, "Pollyanna-esque"  view of the world. Rather it acknowledges the sad fact that in our culture, politics, art and literature, the Dark Side often overwhelms the Light and needs no succor from us.  We choose the nature of our personal environment and the themes of our creations. So, to maximize harmony in my life, as I said, "I’ll have beauty - hold the beast."

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Life is a Beach

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I sleep, and in that sleep I dream. 

A dream that stacks days of lifetimes 

Scattered like shells across  

The seemingly vast beach  

Of my existence. 

The pretty pebbles of childhood 

Riddled with veins of laughter and tears. 

A tangled weir of driftwood  

All roots and polished branches 

Drifted in from someone else's shore. 

I wonder how it came here. . . 

Lover's shells, pearlescent spirals. 

Their gleaming chambers glow 

And echo the roar and murmur  

Of the waves that break all round. 

Shorebirds dance in the sparkling foam 

Knit up of remembered laughter and 

The scattered remain of some small creatures, 

Lost and forgotten plans or unmet aspirations. 

Victims of an unfortunate shift of the tide. 

The breeze flirts with becoming a wind. 

Threatening to send my hat aloft, 

It carries a tang of salt, a sigh of memory, 

And yet a hint of promised tomorrows. 

I make my way across an arch of beach 

That fronts dunes anchored by sea grass. 

Fragile tracks that etch the sand  

Mark the paths of vanished creatures 

With better claim to this mythic space than I. 

Gulls stitch the sky, 

Raucously declaring a synthesis  

Of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

I chance upon an unexpected pine 

Whose twisted trunk and wind-sculpted 

Shadow o'er reach all three. 

Beneath its sheltering boughs 

Silken sand invites me to recline 

So I stretch out, again to sleep, 

Perchance, once more, to dream. 

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Talking the Talk - or Fostering Harmonic Language

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The first tenet of Distilled Harmony is Foster Harmony. It is important to realize right up front that “fostering harmony" is inextricably woven together with our use of language. You cannot manifest harmony while using the language of anger or hatred, suspicion or fear. Harmony demands the language of caring, of affection - the language of love, if you will - since those vocabularies articulate harmony while blunting the discord of anger, hatred and fear.

Harmonic speech is a type of artistic expression. And like any other art form, it requires attention and practice - especially if your personal or cultural experiences have been rooted in a language of confrontation or conflict, a reality which is, unfortunately, rather common. Dealing with dysfunctional relationships - including the language employed in those relationships - keeps thousands and thousands of therapists in business! Not all that surprising given that, for the most part, we live in a competitive culture. We tend to focus on winners and losers. There are certainly benefits to be derived from this "meritocratic" perspective. Ideally, it leads to a general improvement in the culture, better education, better science, consumer products, medicine, etc. But there is a dark side to the meritocracy. And the Dark Side sees people as winners and losers as well.  And the language of “I win, you lose” leaves at least half of the conversation feeling anything but harmonic. And, of course, bullying and internet trolling both rest firmly on the use of discordant language. 

Stay with me here on what may seem an unrelated diversion. Crafting a harmonic vocabulary, springs from a harmonic view of life. Both require a delicate existential balance. To over-compensate for the often harsh vicissitudes of life by declaring that everybody is a winner results in "participant ribbons" and the distortion of the very real line between ordinary and exceptional.  Better, I think, is to realize that we are all “differently-abled.”  I like to think of life and our place in it as a jigsaw puzzle. We are each a unique piece of the puzzle.  Our abilities and inabilities form the contours of our individual puzzle piece.  In a perfect world, we blend with all the other pieces of the puzzle to create the picture on the front of the box.  And that would be lovely - but we see little evidence of such a global harmonic consolidation. A less intimidating objective might be to try to fit with the pieces in our immediate vicinity. And this implies dialing down the notion of individuals as winners or losers, and focusing instead on the value of our differing abilities. I mean its not much of a puzzle if all the pieces are square, right? But I’m letting the analogy steer the ship here. So let’s back up a bit. 

The challenge in Fostering Harmony is to explore the ways in which our real and very valuable differences can fit together to create a harmonic whole that is truly greater than the mere sum of its parts.  And that is where harmonic language plays its part. Prayer and its secular cousin, poetry, are the most obvious forms of consciously harmonic speech, but outside of a religious institution or a Shakespearian play, they are rarely used in everyday conversation. Try conversing with someone on the street in prayer or iambic pentameter and folks begin to edge away from you or fake a call on their cellphone. However, there are other ways to practice harmonic speech that will not only increase your skill in the art form, but will also allow you to more successfully Foster Harmony.

Here, again, we find ourselves on a bit of a balance beam.  Harmonic language, and harmonic conversation in particular, is driven by a legitimate interest in and at least a potential agreement with the other.  Unfortunately, politicians, salespeople and advertisers have discovered that appearing to be interested in, and in agreement with, voters or customers is also the most effective way to achieve personal and often selfish goals. Honest harmonic language rests on a foundation of actual interest in, and a sincere desire to seek agreement with the other.  And both of those characteristics rest on a genuine curiosity about the other and a willingness to accept that the other may know more than you about a given topic. 

Pragmatically that means that in the course of a conversation words and phases like, “Yes” and “That’s interesting” and “What do you think about .  . “ need to come out of our mouths more often than “No” and “What you need to do is . . . and, “Well, I believe .  .  .“  That does not mean that you simply abdicate your beliefs, values or attitudes. Rather, part of the artistry of harmonic speech is exploring how your beliefs, values, and attitudes can find common ground with the beliefs attitudes and values of the other. And that brings us to a consideration of the aesthetic component of harmonic speech. 

In an earlier post, The Wonder of Words, I wrote about how “long form” compositions were far superior to texting,  SMS posts and Tweets because they allowed for a more complete expression of a thought. It is probably worthwhile to note that it is not simply the number of words that informs harmonic speech, it is the aesthetic quality of those words.  In that post I point out that when we had "art" in 3rd or 4th grade we would pull out our trusty Prang water colors - 8 basic colors in a shiny black metal tray.  And that was the extent of our "palette." Nowadays, in the bright digital world of Photoshop et. al., we have come to expect millions of colors to be available at the beck and call of a clicking mouse. An examination of language reveals the same variation of breadth and depth.  This aesthetic component of harmonic speech draws upon the second tenet of Distilled Harmony - Enable Beauty.  It is patently obvious that there is a universe of difference between “Me Tarzan. You Jane.” and “My Love is like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June.”  Yet both articulations are driven by the same emotion. The difference is that Tarzan is working with Prang’s eight color palette, while Robert Burns is speaking Photoshop. 

Enriching our aesthetic linguistic palette requires effort, especially in the popular digital environment that seems to privilege compositions of 140 to 160 characters - a convention that would seem to advantage Tarzan: "I ❤️ u J!” while leaving Burns struggling to decide which words in his poem are - after all - superfluous: "My ❤️ is a nu flr” ? Definitely something lost in translation there.  To construct a rich linguistic palette, it is perhaps best to leave the struggles with emojis and phonetic truncation alone, and return to three dependable, though time-consuming, strategies: read, listen, perform.

Reading is the first among equals.  To use a word, you have to know the word, and while you can come to know a word by hearing it, or speaking it, reading the word has a significant advantage: the word does not move. The experience of hearing a word ceases when the sound waves no longer strike the ear to be carried to the brain. Speaking the word ceases when your vocal cords lie still. The written word, lines and curves, or bumps on a page stay there, allowing you to reflect upon it. Study it in the context of the other words that encircle it. Speak it if you choose to do so. Absorb it.   

So read and read widely. My biases? For power and precision read Hemingway from the 1920s and 1930s. For linguistic complexity, Jane Austin and Charles Dickens. For American brashness and humor - Mark Twain, and not just the novels.  For words and attention to scene that are rarely present in contemporary works try popular novels from the late 1800s and early 1900s: James Oliver Curwood, Gene Stratton-Porter, Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey. None of this last group are ever seriously considered for inclusion in the canon of great American novelists - except maybe if there is a sub-category for Westerns where both L’Amour and Grey should get a nod.  Also, if you are unable to separate the novels from the time in which they were written, you will find them chock full of “cultural insensitivity” - as was the world in which they lived - so parts of the works may make you uncomfortable. But if you simply ignore them because of those chronological foibles, at least part of your palette gets short-changed.  And then read everything. Magazines, fiction, non-fiction, news sources, blogs, poetry.  Stuff as many colors into your palette as you can.  You probably noticed that my reading recommendations are from days gone by.  That is intentional.  I remember when I was young, if I wanted to learn how to write or speak “proper English” I would go to a book. I didn’t know it then, but I was trusting the editors to make sure that the basic rules of grammar, spelling, etc., were being followed. If there were intentional deviations, our attention would be drawn to them by quotation marks: “quittin’ time, y’all!” or something like that.  While I’m sure today’s editors still struggle to protect the language from flagrant abuse, I am “a’feared” that with the flood of self-published works they may be fighting a losing battle.

Listening is the easiest palette builder in the 21st century.  With streaming video, audio books and podcasts available on our computers, tablets and phones, it would seem that we need never listen to the sounds of silence or another commercial.  But with all this linguistic wheat out there, it is inevitable that there is even more chaff.  Remember, we are trying to augment our aesthetic harmonic linguistic palette.  The purveyors of digital content realized long ago that as a culture we will still listen to the commercials if they are embedded in content we find entertaining or informative.  In May of 1961, Newt Minnow, then Chair of the FCC said, "When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse.” The same holds true for today’s Internet and video streaming options.  And unfortunately it is mindlessly simple to find the linguistically discordant. Ranting podcasts, “self-help” shows that are the audio equivalent of cage wrestling, “news" programs built along the same lines, endless dramas featuring dysfunctional families, and of course, crime dramas each episode of which places the world as we know it danger from the “terrorists d’jour.”  Hard to bake good bread from all that chaff. 

Still, almost all those good options I listed up there under “reading" exist in audio versions. Our public library has a wide variety of audio offerings that you can download to phones, tablets, etc.  Great for trips. In addition there are wonderful podcasts available in the both the arts the sciences.  They may not be the first options you stumble across, but they are out there if you look for them - so look for them. Listen for the words, listen for the sounds of cooperation, of harmony.

Performance is an option we often tend to ignore.  I came to it quite early, and I am not really sure why.  However, my sister has provided me with photographic evidence of my playing Peter Pan to a Captain Hook played by a girl much taller than I. Beverly C something? Copenhagen? Nah, couldn’t be. Anyhow, 2nd grade? Maybe 3rd?  I recall similar photos from a 1950s Wittenberg College production of Mrs. McThing - in which I played the dual role of “Howay” and “Boy.”  Casting for which I hold my father responsible.  However, I have to take responsibility for my choice to recite - in maybe 4th grade?- Stephen Vincent Benet’s very long poem “The Mountain Whippoorwill: Or How Hillbilly Jim Won the Great Fiddler’s Prize,” which was at least partial inspiration for the Charlie Daniel’s hit "The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” The poem was the inspiration - not my recitation of it, which, no doubt, bored my classmates past all understanding.  

I was in a number of plays in my high school which was blessed with an excellent drama department, and went on to major in Theater in college. While there I performed in - which, remember, meant both memorizing and performing the words - a variety of roles from Arthur Miller to Shakespeare.  And I have come to realize that the process of memorization and performance is perhaps the best way to add entire new families of colors to your aesthetic linguistic palette.  So give it a whirl. Community theater, your local version of TED talks, storytelling.  Or just read Shakespeare aloud - probably at home, by yourself.  “Gather ye palettes while you may.” 

In conclusion, If we were to pull the third tenet of Distilled Harmony - Distill Complexity - into this rambling discussion of talking the talk of harmony, we might well compress the whole post into a slightly edited version of an aphorism that we have all encountered: If you can’t say something nice, and nicely, then don’t say anything at all.

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A Mini-Wall - Poetry

A Mini-Wall - which is a mind worm that will not let me sleep until I write it down, 

Poetry

Poetry is less  

a depiction of a reality  

perceived by the eye,  

and more  

the creation of a reality  

conceived in the mind.  

There, in the  

nooks and crannies  

of the cerebellum,  

lives a world of  

aching beauty  

wanting only the  

liberating touch of 
language. 

Metamorphosis

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I had a question from out there on the Schrag Wall blog about the Distilled Harmony perspective on an Afterlife, specifically: "Does Distilled Harmony advocate something like reincarnation?"  Interesting question. Here are my thoughts: 

First, Distilled Harmony doesn't advocate any specific series of conclusions. Rather it seeks to define a harmonious framework within which each of us can explore a variety of questions and reach our own conclusions about living a harmonic life.  So Distilled Harmony defines a path, not a destination.  Hence, all I can really share are the places that I encounter along my own path. 

That being said, do I believe in reincarnation?  Not so much reincarnation in the sense of being born into a new life in this locale, even though some intensely harmonic relationships present an emotional/intuitive argument for “having known you in another place and time.” But I am a bit uncomfortable with a rebirth that seems tethered to this third rock from the sun, or a heaven or paradise similarly linked to our current existence. If, as the chord theory extension of string theory implies, our physical being, our essential chord, is comprised of infinitesimal strings, tuned as best we can to the overarching music of the universe, it seems rather short-sighted to restrict any subsequent expression of that chord to our little tiny corner of the Milky Way.  

Rather, I am inclined toward the notion of a metamorphosis, a transition from our current existence to another. Again, to point to String Theory, a kind of phase transition. The analogy of a moth or butterfly arising from cocoon is helpful: this life - while precious in its own right - is also preparatory to other existences to come, existences not necessarily tied to our current cosmic here and now.  We might well emerge from our mortal cocoon anywhere in the universe and in forms - that while quite “normal” in that "post-emergence reality" - would be inconceivable to us in our current existence. 

I was listening to the National Gallery of Art Podcast “Flights of Angels: The Heavenly Orders in the Renaissance" the other day.  I was fascinated to learn of the hierarchical intricacies that Renaissance artists brought to their depictions of angels - their attempts to visualize entities they had never seen from a place they had never experienced. We are, I would hazard, equally hard pressed to imagine a post-metamorphosis existence. That does not render such an existence impossible, or even improbable.  Again, if we peek at the notion of metamorphosis through the lens of physics we still see nothing to remove metamorphosis from the realm of the possible. The first law of thermodynamics argues against the destruction of matter, but does allow for its transformation - at least within a closed system like the universe.  So shuffling off the Bard's "mortal coil," certainly allows for the notion that we may be shuffling onto another, transformed, coil.  Given the total lack of any scientific data for or against an afterlife; that's my harmonic stance of the moment. 

So, if that is my position, I need to treat it as reality, and consider the issues it raises. One of obvious significance is consciousness. Can we be conscious of previous existences? Or is that not possible in this current "cocoon"? But might we, however, acquire such "multiple-existence consciousness" as a post-metamorphosis butterfly?  Or are some folks - those who have attained "grace" or "enlightenment" or whatever - already able to exercise "multiple-existence consciousness?”  It is a capability some cultures ascribe to shamans, and other “holy figures." 

A less obvious, and somewhat stranger consideration, derives from our current search for "life" in the universe. We seem to be focusing on chemical signatures that indicate either the potential for life, or its presence. But what if "evolved consciousness" is a more accurate measure of meaningful existence in the cosmos than any physical traces of "life as we know it?"  What "signatures" would reveal such consciousness? How would we look for them? And would the ability to find them constitute a kind of time travel, as we might encounter entities that had been cocoons here, but had already emerged as evolved consciousnesses elsewhere and "elsewhen?" 

I don't know.  But then I didn't promise answers; but rather a consideration of the issues that lie along my particular harmonic path. So I'll just keep plodding along. Should I encounter any promising answers, I'll let you know :-)

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What It Means to be Human

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I was watching a National Geographic program last night while cleaning the kitchen. With hushed narration, it contemplated the future of a brave new world that included androids whose neural net processors would blur, if not erase, the line between natural and artificial intelligence; between humans and humanlike machines. The program went on to pose the question, almost fearfully, of “What does it mean to be human?"

The question stayed with me as I wiped off the counters, put the leftovers away, and turned off the TV.  The images of IBM’s Watson beating the best chess and Go players in the world, and a beautiful, helpful, but still kind of creepy android named “Bina48” who self-identifies as “human,” stuck with me throughout the evening, and not in a pleasant way.

But now, at 2:54 AM - according to my very helpful, but not at all human, iPad - the question of what it means to be human seems far less daunting. The answer, in fact, is rather prosaic. Being human is not programmable, because “human-ness" is neither a process or a product. Being human is a feeling. We will never learn to program "compassion." We may well be able to program androids like Bina48 with "artificial compassion," able to mimic compassionate behaviors. And it will be easy to anthropomorphize such creations, as a child imbues a beloved stuffed animal with human qualities.  But, until The Velveteen Rabbit actually becomes "real," draws breath, hops about, and feels human emotions all on its own, even the most wondrous of our creations will remain but pale imitations of the glorious entity enclosed within the fragile wrappings of our skin. 

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La Belle Epoque Americane

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First let me admit to being a devoted fan of the Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris, starring Owen Wilson.  I will not spoil the plot for you except to note that through a bit of time travel - that seems entirely plausible to anyone who has wandered through the misty midnight streets of Paris - our protagonist, a present day frustrated novelist [Wilson] and Picasso’s mistress from sometime between the World Wars [played by Marion Cotillard] debate which of Paris’s artistic eras really defined La Belle Epoque - the golden age of French art and culture.  Rent it, watch it, love it.  But realize that Woody has borrowed his plot from a common activity from an earlier age. 

During the 1700 and 1800s the youth of England's elite would travel around what is now the European Union and the Middle East seeking the roots of Western Civilization. By the early 1900s they were joined in this "Grand Tour" by the scions of America's emerging 1%, the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Morgans, etc. These tours, which could stretch from several months to over a year, were often made in the company of a tutor versed in history, languages, architecture and the arts.

It is informative to consider what these "best and brightest" young people observed on this grand tour - which has been defined as a finishing school for the elite. To what did these future leaders of America and Europe attend?  Well, they were young people in their early 20s so, no doubt, the cafes of Paris and the clubs of Monaco were part of the itinerary. But more important were the high points of European music, art, literature and architecture; the ruins of Ancient Greece and the Holy Land, the pyramids of Egypt.  For a lucky few with a longer reach and even deeper pockets, the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall, and the Imperial City of China.

The point is that even these scions of America’s first Robber Barons, children of unimaginable fortunes didn’t seek out the counting houses of London, the bank vaults of Switzerland, or the treasure troves of Venice. Rather they flocked to the artistic and the cultural manifestations of the Hapsburgs, the Greek city states, the Doges, the Pharaohs, the Chinese Emperors.  

We like to assert that this is America’s Belle Epoque. And there is plenty of evidence. A representative democracy, first human being to set foot on a celestial body other than earth, first nuclear power, home to world’s largest and most valuable corporations, etc., etc.  But for some reason, we still head off around the world to immerse ourselves in the cultural manifestations of the Old World.

And maybe that is part of the problem. We are a “baby nation” when compared to Europe, Greece, Rome, Egypt and China. We are not far removed from citizens who could actually recall the birth of our nation, and when I was born there were still living veterans of the Civil War.  We are a young nation, certainly when we consider our cultural and artistic heritage. We seem to have a great start in music - jazz, musical theater. Some excellent photographers and film makers.  In short we can be proud of our efforts in those media that have grown up along with our nation. But despite some awesome artists - O’Keeffe, RC Gorman and the Hudson River School are among my personal favorites - we cannot point back across the dusty eons to our ancient artistic icons because, well, our eons aren’t all that dusty yet.

We need to learn from those dustier times.  For the most part those awe-inspiring artifacts of the past were state-sponsored.  We lose sight of that because, until our baby nation came toddling along some 240 years ago, the “state” was often a single individual or family. The king or queen, emperor, doge, or pharaoh sponsored the art that came to represent their era - palaces, pyramids, monuments, temples to the gods, celestial ceilings - all these were paid for by the ruler of a “singular head state."  Artists who works became iconic of an age rarely competed on the “open market.” Royal, or wealthy, or privileged “taste makers” decided what artists of every stripe would create.

Our baby nation has taken some brave steps in a new direction. Certainly today’s quasi-royal taste-makers; tech billionaires, celebrities, hedge fund moguls, those still among the economic 1%, can elevate a particular artist by buying, wearing, singing or collecting that artist’s work. And, who knows, maybe big bucks can equate to aesthetic sensibilities, the jury is still out on that.  More comforting is the fact that the boards of the nation’s top tier of galleries also weld considerable taste-making power.  Yet, we need to remember that the Paris Salon turned up its nose at the Impressionists until the late 1800s.  

So perhaps most comforting and far-sighted endeavor of all has been our baby nation’s wisdom in pursuing a more democratic support system for artists. The National Endowment for the Arts and for the Humanities undertake the staggering task of lending support to America’s artists who may not yet have caught the eye of today’s big galleries, celebrities, or the super-wealthy collectors.  These, and other tax support initiatives in the arts and humanities, are our best - new and democratic opportunities - to approach and surpass the ageless art of the ancients, to truly create Le Belle Epoque Americane.

Our elected officials seem a bit conflicted in this area.  The President espouses doing away with these national endowments - at least that is his position as I write this.  Yet, the recently released Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017, a bipartisan Congressional budget proposal for the rest of this year, advocates a 2 million dollar boost to the National Endowment for the Arts’s budget. Perhaps Congress is looking for our guidance. I firmly believe the national endowments are the way to go, and have written my representatives encouraging them to follow the lead of the Consolidated Appropriations Act and to continue funding those endowments.  I encourage you to do same.

Now, I have to go find a misty, cobblestone street winding along a lamplit river that I can wander along.  No telling who I might bump into, and from what century?

What say Mr. Twain? Vive la belle époque Americane!

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Relationships in Suspended Animation

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I have been reading about intimacy and relationships in the Dalai Lama's "Art of Happiness." In the work the Dalai Lama asserts that compassion is the primary underpinning of all human relationships. That compassion forms the gentle and understanding foundation that supports all positive interactions. In many ways it is the "walk a mile in my shoes," "see the need in the other's life" perspective. As the primary tenet of Distilled Harmony - Foster Harmony - is essentially the same idea, I read along in a "right on!" frame of mind.

The chapter focused primarily on how one should bring a compassionate and open attitude to new or existing relationships. Lovely insights there that I need to mull over a bit more. I’m afraid that may result in some "point the finger at thyself” moments. But I'll put that off for another day.

However, the reading got me thinking about a rather unique set of compassionate relationships that play unique but vital roles in my life. They are what I think of as "relationships in suspended animation" or RSAs.

Back in 1975 Paul Simon wrote a song called "Some Folks Lives Roll Easy." Part of the lyric goes like this:

And here I am, Lord

I'm knocking at your place of business

I know I ain't got no business here

But you said if I ever got so low

I was busted,

You could be trusted

RSAs are the those unique and precious relationships where we can go “knocking" when we are "so low we are busted," even if we "ain't got no business" there.

They are not simply old relationships. We were watching an Midsomer Murders" rerun last night in which the protagonist's daughter engineers a reunion of her "dearest school mates," whom she has not seen for a decade. Not positive how that scans out in the US school system - but these folks seemed to be early 20s. Well, I hope it was storyline considerations that mandated the conclusions, but the reunion was a total disaster in the Midsomer tradition of multiple murders.

RSAs are quite different. We may still be in touch with these suspended animation connections, especially in these days of casual, almost unavoidable, social media connections. We may see their partners, kids, cats and dogs. We may respond with a desultory thumbs up, a like, or a cleverly pre-designed emoticon. Very 21st century. Very McLuhan hot media. Those kinds of interactions do not warrant hitting the "suspended animation" reset button. Remember the rest of Simon's lyric: "You said if I ever got so low I was  busted, you could be trusted." 

Usually we reach out to our RSAs after exploring a pressing issue with our most valued, but everyday, vital sounding boards - spouse, partner, valued colleague, BFF, etc.  Somewhat in contrast to Simon's lyric, I would assert that the issues that prompt us to reach out to our RSAs, need not be driven only by the "so low I was busted" times, they can also be just the opposite - seeking affirmation in a great new opportunity or choice. The important part of the lyric is "you could be trusted." The important aspects are significance and trust. We reach out to our RSAs when we really want additional trusted advice on some important issue in our lives. But we definitely do NOT want to crowd source it to Facebook or whatever bot is crawling our webpages.

So we set aside our lingering fears of rejection and remember that this was, and hopefully still is, a person "who could be trusted." And we begin the search for email addresses, physical address, phone numbers, etc., that will allow us to start the process of "knocking at their place of business."

There will be anxiety associated with waiting to see how, or even if, someone answers the knock. But I truly believe that most often the response will be worth the risk. And the Dalai Lama agrees. Oh, yes, the Dalai Lama and I very, very close .  .  .  .  . Or at least I think we might be, were I to ever actually meet him .  .  .  :-)

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Future Tense

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Worrying about the future 

Makes it quite difficult  

To be happy today.  

That is not to say  

We should not have dreams. 

But too often  

Our slavish pursuit of dreams  

Turns them into nightmares.  

It is difficult to smell the roses  

If we spend our hours in the garden  

Spreading manure and  

Dusting to kill the aphids. 

We must learn to say: 

Today is sufficient. 

This I can appreciate.  

I do not need  

A chorus of angels to sing for me.  

A single mourning dove will suffice.  

I do not need  

The applause of the masses.  

The smile on the face of a friend  

Is affirmation enough. 

I do not need 

To turn the world  

To my way of thinking. 

Understanding my own path 

To peacefulness will do.  

And all this fits comfortably  

Within the soft blanket  
Of today. 

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Schrag Porch: More Selected Oldies

Schrag Porch: Still around 2001, maybe ‘02

Preference Tracking

Contextual information, a la Amazon et al, is a problematic "product." We now allow software engineers to define the links in our personal conceptual space. Imagine sending a poem to your lover using e-mail. The poem appears on her screen surrounded by messages that begin: If you love this man, then you might also enjoy these other guys. . . ."

[A 2017 Update – regulations that would have limited the amount and kinds of personal information various online entities could gather and sell have just been struck down by The White House.  “Everything old is new again .  .  . “]

The “Good” Heartbreak in Love Songs

The heartbreak in love songs is not my heartbreak, and therein lies their beauty. When Eva Cassidy sings "Along the winter shore, all your fickle friends are leaving. But then you know that it was time for them to go," there is a purity of loss that just "hurts so good." 

Certainly loss is loss and empty can be incredibly painful; yet out the other side of loss is a positive empty, because only that which is empty can be filled again. The refilling of a heart made deeper and emptier by loss is just about as close as we can get to grace/nirvana/heaven/peace - chose your own inadequate word. So love songs remind us that the beauty of heartbreak is the promise of the refilling that will follow loss.

The Voice as an Instrument

Today  on  my  walk,  I  listened  to  Elvis: The  Number  One Hits.  A couple  of things occurred to me. First, the man had a simply incredible voice - range, power, fabulous control. Not obvious on songs like "Hound Dog," but on works like "Don't" and "It's Now or Never," the range is operatic. 

Parallel thoughts: The voice is an instrument - not terribly profound, I realize, but the way in which that particular instrument is employed in a work makes important differences. Instrumental works have no vocals so the work is instrumentally structured and communicated. Elvis, Bocelli, Streisand, and Sinatra all foreground the voice as the dominant instrument, hence the lyric is also dominant. 

Much contemporary music seems unable to decide between the need for loud instruments or dominant vocals. Unfortunately the result is often a discordant competition between the two. "Vocalists" hollering over loud instruments. A bit of linguistic evidence: bands have been "bands" both before MTV and after MTV. But before MTV we used to identify the individual members as either musicians or vocalists. After MTV it became quite common to refer to mainstream band members as "performers." Neither musician nor vocalist, they "act" in music videos or choreographed concerts.

[Another 2017 update, I have rediscovered John Denver’s voice. OK, some of the lyrics do lean toward trite, but listen to the voice. Headphones. Just lovely.]

Schrag Porch : An Introduction

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I started posting to Schrag Wall a decade ago. I don’t know how many of you have been along for the whole ride, but even if you have been here for that ride, it isn’t really the whole ride. The composition you see as Schrag Wall actually began back in 2001 or so when I began writing the book The God Chord: String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart. [Drop me a note and I’ll send you an e-copy. It provides some vocabulary that makes the early posts easier to understand.] The note-taking system I used back then was to write a phrase or sentence that I felt should go in the book somewhere on a sheet of paper and I would tape it onto the wall - hint, hint - above my computer monitor.  Many of those notes eventually became the blog Schrag Wall - but the blog didn’t start until 2006. So there are 5 years of notes floating around here on my hard drive or up in The Cloud somewhere which never - or at least probably never - made it onto the blog.

A few entries have appeared on Schrag Wall over the years that reveal my perhaps exaggerated fondness for the front porch of my childhood home. I wrote, not long ago, about never having found the place where I felt completely at home.  The porch is probably the exception. However, a bright red 8 x 12 foot [maybe?] slab of concrete doesn’t quite seem to fit the mystic notion of “coming home to a place you’ve never been before.”  It was more like a place I had always been - maybe a launch pad to that mystic home that still eludes me? Anyhow, I feel a digression coming on, so let me rein in a bit.  If you see a post that is labeled Schrag Porch instead of Schrag Wall, it means that I have wandered back into the “lost years” between 2001 and 2006 and pulled a "feels like home" golden oldie off of the front porch for you.  If I can find a specific date, I’ll post it. Otherwise just think “old stuff.”

I notice that many of the earlier works were much shorter than the current Wall posts. You may find a good thing :-)

Here are a few very early ones from 2001:

Rescuing

A surprising number of rescuers are pulled under by those they would save. The lesson is not "let them drown." The message is "Throw them something that floats, but keep to the shore.”

Possession

Implies maintenance.

Awkward Neighbors

Genius and insanity live in the same building. Sometimes they wander into the wrong apartment. If you love those chats with genius, you must also learn to tolerate the occasional bouts with insanity.

Emotion and Passion
Passion is not an emotion in its own right. It is rather a degree of intensity that can be brought to any emotion. Unmodulated passion dominates any chord of which it becomes a part. Unmodulated passion draws notes, situations, and people into a composition that is dominated or defined by the emotion that unmodulated passion has hybridized. Modulated passion intensifies the chord but does not overwhelm it.

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Trump's Backhanded Boost to Science

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Whoa! Wait, wait, wait a minute. You’re going to spill coffee all over your lab coat. Hear me out here. Yes, I know that the  White House just released a budget that puts America’s science profile roughly on  a par with Paraguay - unless you are part of the military, or own a construction company along the Mexican border. But you see, that is exactly the point.

It s important  to realize is that there is a significant degree of freedom in finding yourself in the middle of an argument that you simply know you cannot win.  I often find myself embroiled in one such repeating “discussion” with some of my students. I have been teaching about media for almost 40 years, stretching from helping them set up a darkroom to develop 35mm film to current discussions about the “black mirror,” aka smartphone, that seems permanently welded to their hands.  It is that bit of technology that lies at the center of an intractable argument.  You see, despite the fact that my classes are about technology, the students in my classrooms are permitted the use of nothing more sophisticated than paper and a suitable, non-internet-connected, marking implement.

Occasionally a student will assert that such a technology prohibition is “not fair,” by which they actually mean “stupid, old-fashioned, and mean.”  I point them to the rather sizable body of research that indicates that students attempting to “multitask” - e.g. answer email, text, follow sports scores, etc., - during class, invariably retain less course content, perform more poorly on test and quizzes, and distract their fellow students. To which they respond, “Well, I don’t believe that.”  Because I am "the teacher" the prohibition stands. But I do not believe for a moment that I have “won” the argument, that I have changed their minds. As in most cases, their belief will trump any data that contradicts that belief. 

And that it why one has to think twice about the value of employing data-based science arguments with members of the current administration.  Think about it: the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t believe that the environment really needs all that much protection. Believes than “clean coal” is not an oxymoron.  The new head of the Federal Communication Commission apparently believes that “net neutrality” defines the no parking zone around the tennis courts at his country club. And the Oval Office, despite the total disagreement of the American Medical Association [AMA], the American Hospital Association [AHA], the Congressional Budget Office [CBO], and the American Association of Retired People [AARP], and a growing list of Republicans, still believes that the ill-defined Donaldcare is necessary to rollback the equally ill-defined predations of the demonized Affordable Care Act.  These are the strongly held beliefs of people in positions of power. Arguing data with them is as futile as my fruitless attempts to convince my smartphone-addicted students that the world will be unaffected, and they will be better informed, if they go off the grid for 75 minutes.

So, in the current climate, what do you do to “make American science smart again?” Well, there are at least a couple of options. You can attempt to confront the irrational triumph of belief over data by complaining to everyone within ear shot about the administration.  I have friends who, for the last 8 years, were able to blame everything - including the number of handicapped parking spaces at McDonalds and the pace of lines at airports and supermarkets - on “Obamacare.”  So far as I could tell, their complaints never changed the speed at which they got their Big Mac, their carry-on stashed above their seat, or their produce bagged.  They just made others around them uncomfortable.  

There is a better way.  But we have to look over our shoulders to find it - so hop into the WayBack Machine, Sherman, and set the date for April 15th, 1874. [Wooowoooowoooowoooo]. 

“Gosh, Mr. Peabody, who are those guys with the paintbrushes?”

“We call them Impressionists, Sherman. Though until this date they were better know as failures.”

Well, you get the idea.  In the 1870s any artist who was anybody had to display their work in the Salon de Paris.  The problem for one hardy crew of renegades - including Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro - was that the powerful group of critics who controlled acceptance to the Salon did not believe in the painting style that would come to be called Impressionism.  Those few Impressionist paintings that had previously been accepted  by the Salon were hung high on the walls out of sight, or in a remote room the size of a closet, or were soon removed altogether.  It eventually became obvious to our merry band of paint slingers that it was pointless to confront the current beliefs of the powerful. So on April 15th, 1874, they opened their own competing exhibition.  The reviews were mixed. But the point is that there were reviews. The Co-operative Company of Artists, Painters, Sculptors, Engravers, etc. - as they called themselves - had slipped out from under the thumb of the gatekeepers of the Salon de Paris.  They sold a few painting at the exhibition and some of the artists went on to enjoy productive careers during their lifetime. But I doubt that even the most optimistic among them could have predicted the joy ride the future had in store. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book David and Goliath, estimates that if the 160 to 200 paintings displayed at that first renegade exhibition were to be sold in the current market one would need somewhere around a billion dollars to acquire them. 

So, what can we take away from our little jaunt in the Wayback Machine?  Particularly when we think about the government and its relationship to science? Well, first we simply need to accept the fact that the “Science Salon” currently in power in Washington will do nothing to advance the cause of scientific research. The appointed heads of the government agencies designed to oversee and advocate for science and technology are neither scientists nor technologists. Since they neither understand, nor believe in, the scientific method, the results of scientific research become, for them, flexible talking points in policy discussions.  Hence, evolution - a scientifically demonstrable fact, and Creationism - a set of specific Judeo-Christian theological concepts - become different, but essentially parallel, “beliefs” that can be debated. In the minds of this new Washington Science Salon many other long established clusters of scientific fact can become alternative beliefs that are up for grabs.  In 1874, the Impressionists decided that they could not be true to their art and continue to bend their work to the arbitrary dictates of the Salon.  So they took their game elsewhere. If the current Science Salon makes it impossible for scientists to be true to their art, perhaps it is time for the scientific community to take their game elsewhere.

I do not make that suggestion lightly.  I am well-aware that the power the current Washington Science Salon holds over the community of research scientists is drawn from the same dual sources as the Salon de Paris - fame and fortune.  Whose work gets published? Whose grants get funded? To a huge degree the professional success of research scientists depends upon the wishes - and beliefs - of the Washington Science Salon.

So where would science go if it were to take its game elsewhere? Well, obviously it needs to find a locus that has deep pockets and an interest in scientific research. Hmmm.  Sounds a lot like Silicon Valley to me.  I know, I know. The idea of panhandling to the likes of Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple kind of creeps me out as well.  But then I thought, creepy as compared to what? To assure full disclosure I need to state that I see the issue from a campus perspective. 

I work in, have always worked in, a university.  It is a family tradition. Counting my father and two uncles who spent much of their lives in college classrooms, the family has racked up more than a century in front of students. Add in my sister who advised university students for 30 or so years, and we may push 150 family people-years in a campus environment. So, yes, that is my perspective. And when it comes to the relationship between the university and the Washington Science Salon it is a perspective with which I find myself growing increasingly uncomfortable. 

Back in January of 1961 President Eisenhower warned of the "military industrial complex," an intertwining of military and business interests that could come to compromise or overshadow the needs of, and benefits to, the general population. I doubt he would be pleased with how poorly we have heeded his warning.  The lines between the government, the military, business, and the university are becoming faint enough to be nonexistent.  And not surprisingly it is money that has blurred the lines.  

The brightest stars in the academic firmament these days tend not to be those asking the most interesting questions or providing the most tantalizing answers.  Rather they are those individuals or “teams” who can craft the grant proposals that fit most neatly into the categories that funding agencies - most often member agencies of the various Washington Science Salons - wish to encourage. To complete the analogy, they are the artists who routinely have their works accepted by the Salon de Paris. They paint what they are suppose to paint. They think what they are supposed to think. Maybe it has always been so. Maybe that was what spooked President Eisenhower back in the midst of the last century. I would like to believe that that was not always the case, that once universities were the places where the best and brightest followed the most creative twists of curious minds. But if it were once so, sadly, it is no longer. Grantsmanship has turned us into salesmen. The Salons are the markets and the product for sale is our intellect.

Once we accept that sad fact, turning our back on the Washington Science Salon doesn’t seem quite so bizarre. Surely our universities still have more in common with the curiosity that drives the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley than we have with the beliefs of the conservative political fundamentalists who control, at least for the next few years, the handouts of the Washington Science Salon. Why not pitch genuinely motivated “pure science” proposals to the Silicon Valley Salon? Some of them already have the mechanism in place. Sure, they are in it for the money, but using the current funding models, so are the universities. Silicon Valley at least seems to realize that the market is driven by innovation, and that you innovate by turning the unfettered creative intellectual exploration of wide ranging ideas into something that may become products and processes that people want. And furthermore, why do we need to limit ourselves to an alternative Salon run by companies, even if those companies are larger and richer than most nations?  We are a nation “of the people” aren’t we? How about crowdsourcing for science? 

These are radical changes. Changes we would never have seriously considered had the Trump Administration not decided to gut American science by creating an environment that is toxic to academic freedom. These are changes that most universities would, and will, initially resist since most large universities have patterned their research and fiscal practices and policies to stay in lock step with the big funding Salons in Washington. You do not bite the Salon that feeds you. But what do you do when, as currently seems the case, the Salon declares that not only do you need - as has long been the case - to study what the Salon decrees you need to study; but now you also need to present and publish only the answers the Washington Science Salon believes to be true? To break the chains of exclusivity currently enjoyed by the Washington Funding Salons and their slightly less dominant, but allied corporate kin, universities would have to devise new models and processes designed to support relatively unfettered research. But surely we can muster the will to do that.  Just how deep does our institutional avarice and intellectual cowardice really run?  Hopefully not that deep. 

Trump seems determined to throw science under the bus - to tell the eggheads “You’re fired!”  Certainly we need to resist those appointments and budget cuts through the traditional routes of political activism. But the reality is that despite those efforts there seems to be some freefall in the future. The least we can do is give some serious consideration as to how and where we choose to land.

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Finding Home

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In Rocky Mountain High, John Denver sings of "coming home to a place he'd never been before."  Denver and co-author Mike Taylor seem to be echoing the gentle, poetic notion that you can "come home" to a place where you were not born, nor had you ever lived. You look around, you take a deep breath and wonderfully, everything just feels right. You are home. 

I don't doubt that.  It must be almost two decades ago that we hired a young woman with the ink barely dry on her Ph.D. from the University of Utah. She was a western gal, through and through. However, not long after joining our faculty she made her first visit to Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks. Upon returning she declared that she had "come home." Nothing she has done since would contradict that assertion. So again, I do not question the notion that one can "come home to a place you've never been before." I am just jealous. 

I have lived in Raleigh since 1981 - so 36 years. Both my daughters were born here. My professional life is defined by my years at NC State. Still, it doesn't really feel like "home" in the mystical sense of Denver's paean to the Rocky Mountains. Don't get me wrong, it has been, and continues to be, a nice ride. It just doesn't have the spiritual, transcendent "home" feeling that Denver ascribes to his mountains. No place does. But that is probably my fault. I may have set my sights a bit high, or perhaps in the wrong direction altogether. 

You see, the events that define a Denveresque sense of "home" for me are not so much cases of where, as they are of when. Scattered throughout my life are moments of intense harmony, when everything feels perfect, when I am "home." We, as spiritual creatures, have a tendency to turn the places where those harmonic moments occur into sacred spaces.  So we have shrines to which we make pilgrimages. "Home" in Denver's sense turns that notion upside down. "Home" becomes a semi-sacred place where harmonic moments occur more frequently than anywhere else in the world. In Denver's world, you do not travel to the shrine. The shrine is the home. I simply have not found mine. 

Those moments that do seem to manifest a Denveresque kind of "home" for me do not share a common locale. Many are harmonic moments that I recall from my childhood, and I realize that I tend remember those events through rose-colored synapses, perhaps even to the point of bending historical fact to fit the tenets of Distilled Harmony. Still, to "come home to a place I've never been before," I would have to encounter a place that would echo those recalled harmonies. 

For example, my memories of rainy days on the front porch in Springfield, Ohio demand that "home" would need to be rainy - like this:

Rain

It is a gentle, cleansing rain.

The air is softer for it. 

The acrylic carved landscape 

Fades aptly to watercolor. 

Insects fight its somnolent call 

To buzz and bumble apace. 

I find myself stirred not so much to sleep, 

But to its less insistent cousin, 

A quiet nap.

Drops are interrupted  

High in the canopy. 

Dancing off leaves  

They gather in crooks and crannies 

Until they overflow  

Into bark's craggy channels 

And dance a zig-zag path  

To the forest floor.

It is a softly soaking rain

Filling the valley at lambing. 

The bright blush of motherhood  

Is rinsed away in rills among the clover, 

Trickling down to brooks, then streams, 

To rivers that lead to the distant imagining  

That is the sea. 

But then some magic moments in the donkey pasture above Clearwater Ranch in Philo, California demand it be sunny - like this:

The Meadow

If you lie 

On your back 

And hold very still 

With your eyes 

On the blue  

Bowl above, 

You may hear 

A quiet sort  

Of curious buzz, 

Preceding  

The funniest 

Bumblingest  

Bee 

Who bumps 

From flower to flower 

Before disappearing  

Back into the sky 

Trailing her buzzing 

Behind her. 

A ladybug eyes 

An Everest of grass 

And slowly  

Begins her ascent. 

Upon claiming  

The peak 

She spreads  

Spotted wings 

And soars off to 

A sheltering tree. 

Thus she avoids 

Toasty fates 

For her brood 

And decades of 

Deep therapy. 

The mockingbird  

Knits  

A complete  

Symphony  

With songs stolen 

From here  

And from there, 

That echo about 

In the morning's  

Soft light 

Accompanying  

The sweet  

Scented air.

Nowhere is sunlight 

Transformed 

Into life 

More magically  

Than 

In a meadow,  

In the morning.

Perhaps you see my problem. It seems that there are folks lucky enough to have a particular place they call home. A physical space where everything feels right. The mountains, the sea, even a particular structure on a particular piece of land. Home is right there. They can point to it.

For me home is in my head. 

"Lucky you!” I hear you saying. "You carry “home” around with you. Wherever you go, you are home.”  True to a certain extent.  Home is up there between my ears.  But strangely I can’t always get “there” from “here.”  That transcendent space of “inner peace” has a way of playing hide-and-seek with us.  "Ha! Ha! Here I am between your ears but you can’t find me for love nor money!”  

I keep looking.  Reike, meditation, a big sheet of blank paper with lots of colorful markers, calm and gentle music, fighting the inclination to enter into debates with those seeking victory or angry affirmation instead of insight.  All the time carrying “home” around between my ears. From the outside it looks a lot like napping, but inside - whoa! We’re climbing the Himalayas in here! 

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