Corrals and Ranges

 “Give me land, lots of land,
Under starry skies above.
Don’t fence me in.”

—Cole Porter and Robert Fletcher

Well, maybe not.  There is something frightening about wide open ranges. Kind of intellectually agoraphobic. Especially these days when your phone, your tablet, even your watch, for God’s sake, seem to dun you with announcements, notifications, reminders, ads and “opportunities.”  I suppose we brought it on ourselves to a certain extent - the whole FOMO thing, fear of missing out. But I am beginning to find myself leaning in the opposite direction.  Having spent my life as an academic, I have always felt that information comes with obligations. To know something comes with an inherent obligation to understand it, or at least to try to understand it, and eventually to understand it, Einstein exhorts us, well enough to explain it clearly to a child.

However, life has unfolded for me recently so as to drop me down the rabbit hole of NFTs - Non-Fungible Tokens. That fact that nobody seems to understand just what they are or why people are willing to spend millions of dollars to “acquire” them, or for that matter what “acquiring” an NFT means, does nothing to ease my lingering personal anxiety. I am, or have been, for 60 or 70 years, a card-carrying intellectual. I am supposed to know, to understand, to explain. Except, I remind myself, I have retired. Which, I assert, is why it is okay to fence yourself in. Build yourself a corral.

These fences, which I am coming to admire, should not become excuses for blinders - shutting out social, political, and intellectual issues that we as a society ignore at our peril. Rather they are reminders that the world has somehow slithered beyond my ability to understand, and by implication, solve, all of the issues, problems, and concerns that my digital announcements, reminders, ads and invitations pour into my increasingly bewildered brain. “Whoa, there Nelly Bell!” say my oft maligned fences. “Art, music, friends and family. Those are your concerns. Fence them in - and in reasonable doses.”

So to take some liberties with Dean Martin’s “MyRifle, My Pony and Me,” tune:

“Purple light in the canyons

There’s where I long to be

With my three good companions

My art, friends, and family.”

—Dimitri Tiomkin / Paul Francis Webster

Wilderness

Would that the wilderness of my future was

Truly trackless, smooth as glass from pole to pole.

No mark or indication as to previous passages,

Of what had gone before; when, where, with what purpose.

Instead the horizon is littered with good intentions.

The “how abouts” the “maybe sos”

The rough drafts, false starts, blank pages.

The detritus of my indecision 

Abandoned for lack of time or passion.

They stare with mute accusation.

And so? What now? Excuses set aside?

Perhaps a true fresh start. 

Refreshed expectations of accomplishments.

Thoreau’s wildness implies wilderness

Implies tracklessness.

Smooth as glass from pole to pole.

Superconductive exploration.

Excitement in a new wilderness 

Of the soul.

Angel Face

 OK, so maybe beauty inducing a spontaneous inhalation, isn’t the best analogy I’ve ever come up with. Let’s try another path to understanding enabling beauty, and shift media as well, from music to literature. And this is where my students would roll their eyes as gen Xers (Yers? Zers?) were wont to do; “Oh, god. Here he goes again!” 

This path to Enabling Beauty is laid out, in part, courtesy of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle a TV show circa 1959 in which we are introduced to Peabody’s Improbable History where canine Professor Peabody and his human sidekick Sherman time travel around history via the Wayback Machine:

“We need to hop into the Wayback Machine. Sherman, set the date to the mid-1400s, say 1450. Florence, Italy. The workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio!”  More eye rolling. Those that weren’t drooping.  “See the youngster over in the corner? Unknown now, but not for long! That is Leonardo de Vinci.”  And then Mr. Peabody would go on to explain that much of Leonardo's early work is collaborative in nature.“During the Renaissance, Sherman, paintings were usually done by groups of artists, directed by a master. Leonardo's first known contribution to one his master's works was in Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ. Almost all critics agree that Leonardo painted the leftmost angel. Its face and hair have a light, graceful quality unlike the other figures in the painting. Leonardo was probably also responsible for the background.”

According to Vasari, Leonardo's first biographer, Verrocchio was so impressed with his pupil's work on the angel’s face that he grew ashamed of his own talents, and swore never to paint again. We really have no way of ascertaining Vasari’s veracity of this version of artistic history, but it does imply that often an early snippet of work points the way to later, more encompassing, excellence.

I have been thinking about that notion of a “little bit,” a “lagniappe” in Cajun, as an indication of later excellence applied to the literature in song lyrics.  The previous post dealt with the spontaneous impact of sound, the quality of the voices, their tone and purity, as an integral element of beauty. It addresses the music/beauty duality as an auditory construct. Neither Amazing Grace nor Somewhere Over the Rainbow really qualify are timeless literature. The one is a religious work, the other a great show tune. Their claim to unusual beauty lies in the auditory tracks. 

However it strikes me that if we pay close attention we can find among some snippets of writing in some song lyrics that might warn us, like Leonardo’s painting of the little angel, that some future excellent writing lurks here. Remember, song lyrics are poetry, or literature set to music; a notion backed up by the, for me initially surprising, announcement that the Nobel Prize in Literature 2016 was awarded to Bob Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

For me that notion presents a recurring clue that, hidden in the lyrics of a song, might be some pieces of exceptional literature. That clue, the equivalent of  the “spontaneous inhalation” I propose on the music side, is manifested on the literature side by a kind of “chuckle”:  “Oh, yes. I like that! Wish I had written that!”  If the author is living and has a website, I will occasionally drop them a note of thanks.  More often, I jot the phrase or sentence down in my “Wish I’d Written That” file. A little bit of which I’m cracking open for you here.  

So, just for fun, I’d like to encourage you to send me some of your favorites.  Somewhere down the line I’ll share your nominations here on The Wall.  Let me know if, when I do a follow up of this post, you’d like to share your identity as an exceptional lyric sleuth. Otherwise I’ll just use the normal anonymous footnote style. 

First, a couple of rules. Let’s rule out Dylan. I mean he already has a Nobel Prize, for crying out loud. Second, let’s stipulate works published after the first radio broadcast of music, Reginald Fessenden’s “Christmas Concert” Christmas Eve, 1906.  I know that’s rather arbitrary, but I am a media guy, and that’s still a pretty wide net. And, of course, if you make a good case for an exception, I’ll add it to the list.

To clarify then, I am not looking for a whole poem or lyric. We’ll let Dylan claim that space. Instead we are looking for a parallel to Leonardo’s “Angel’s face.” A single sentence, perhaps couplet or phrase that from our lips draws the Hallelujah, to steal a possible example. Something that leads us to suspect that beautiful literature may lie this way.

Here are a few of my current favorites:

“A phone that rings at midnight ain’t got nothing good to say.

- Trouble on the Line.  - Marley’s Ghost

“Those Williams boys still mean a lot to me - Hank and Tennessee.“

- Good Old Boys Like Me. - Bob McDill

“Try to remember when life was so tender that dreams were kept beside your pillow.” - Try to Remember. Tom Jones “Fantastics”

“Some day, you'll know, I was the one. But tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun.”

I’ll Follow the Sun.  - Lennon and McCartney

“But here in this graveyard that's still no man's land

The countless white crosses in mute witness stand

To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.”  The Green Fields of France. - Bogle Eric

And of course;

“The first time ever I saw your face, I thought the sun rose in your eyes.” The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. -  Ewan MacColl

Pure Beauty

.The second tenet of Distilled Harmony is Enable Beauty, which is a bit slippery on a couple of fronts.  Sometimes it simply means go out, or go online and replenish art supplies - stock up on paper, paint, markers, etc. Get frames to frame pieces I have printed out. Hang stuff on my “gallery walls.” Very prosaic stuff. Literally gather the tools necessary to create works in whatever genre I am playing with at the moment. Baseline “enabling.”  But obviously just having the tools creates only the most tenuous path to beauty - along the lines of get a huge chunk of marble, a hammer and a chisel and hammer away all the marble that doesn’t look like The David. Ta da. That there, that’s yer beauty.

A few rungs up the ladder of sophistication, brings us to the notions of environment and permission. Making most art is messy, which is why artists of all stripes try to claim some type of "studio". A place where the tools of the trade, as it were, can spill out. Do a search on “Video of Jackson Pollock working” for some glimpses of a messy studio on steroids.  But even an artist who works primarily digitally needs a space that can contain post-it notes, print outs of rough drafts, trays for snacks, etc.  I remember, many years ago, stumbling across a potter’s studio during a sort of touring art show somewhere in northern Michigan. And the only thing I remembered the entire “tour” is this awesome studio. Huge space, almost all windows looking out on a stream winding into a forest. I remember thinking “anyone could create here!”  Silly, I know, but that was my thought at the time.

I was ignoring the vital aspect of permission. It's not just about having the space in which to create. Not only is art messy, but it requires large chunks of uninterrupted time. “Doing Art” regardless of the medium is all about flow. You really cannot “hold that thought” or “save that line” “wash your hands and come here for a minute.” Artists do those things, and may be able to come back to the “moment of interruption” and move forward, but the piece created “post-interruptus” will be different from that which would have been created without the interruption. It is not necessarily a case of better or worse, just different. So, it is probably best for an artist to try to create a personal and professional environment in which the permission to spend large amounts of uninterrupted time “doing art” is acknowledged. Where stepping out of your "creating space" is not necessarily seen as an invitation to be set another task.

Yet, all that being said, - with obvious apologies to my better half - the stickiest issue lies ahead. The whole Beauty thing.  I was watching a video the other day about a well-known New York art figure, Ann Freedman, former president Knoedler & Company Gallery, who had been widely acknowledged as selling forgeries of paintings - literally "made in China," that she steadfastly contended were authentic.  When asked what her initial impression of a forged Rothko that she had sold, she replied, “I thought it was just beautiful!” I pick on Rothko for a couple of reasons. First, the “gallery forger” did acknowledge that while she still maintained that her Rothko was “real,” he was “easy to fake.” Secondly, some of my best friends are Rothko lovers. And some Rothko lovers are art experts with impeccable credentials. Rothko is unquestionably an artist of significant stature.

Now, let me sidetrack for one of my favorite stories about my Dad.  When he was in his early 90s Christine and I took him to lunch in Long Grove, which, at the time, was a lovely little town northeast of Chicago. While it has fallen a bit on hard times, there was - and still is, I think - a neat art gallery cum gift shop. Maybe called "The Studio"? Anyhow we were walking around the place, which was “gallery-ish” enough that you keep your voice down. Well, most folks did. However, Dad had been studying an abstract piece hanging on the wall for several minutes before declaring in a definitely non-lowered voice, “Why, I wouldn’t hang that in my toilet!” We quickly decided it was time for lunch and scurried out the door.

Point is, with his expertise fully acknowledged, I feel the same way about Rothko. It mattered naught to me that our purveyor of forged Rothkos, Pollocks, etc., thought her Rothko was “beautiful,” I would have to side with what I think Dad’s assessment of Rothko's work would be, and it would not be "My, that is just beautiful."  The point lies in this aphorism: beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or in the case I would like to explore a little further; in the ear of the listener.

I am addicted to music. I am trying to think of a time during a normal day when I am not listening to music, and I’m having trouble.  “How about right now?” you may ask. Well, right now I am typing on my Mac while listening to a classical piano track on Pandora which is, simultaneously, being accompanied by a rain storm track on Naturespaces. “OK,” you say. “How about when you are asleep?”  Same blend. Pandora and Naturespaces, all night long. And I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that I either sleep with my headphones on, or in the guest room. So I guess that the only time I am not listening to music is when I am watching some type of video - which usually has a sound track. Sigh.

All of which has led to consider what characteristics in music do I find most beautiful. While realizing that my characteristics will probably differ from yours I thought it would be fun to share those thoughts and some of that music with you.

I suppose it is not strange that often the music I find most beautiful shares a close relationship with tenet number three, Distill Complexity. It is not that I am unacquainted with complex musical forms. In high school I sang, competitively, in an octet. We had a brilliant conductor who had previously worked with Johnny Mathis and the Young Americans. He was quite demanding and it was largely because of his expertise that we won statewide contests several times. In college, I sang one of the leads in the opera based on James Thurber's children's book Many Moons. So, yes. I am familiar with complexity in musical forms. And occasionally I quite enjoy them. A couple of concerts in Venice; one Vivaldi and unique version of Rossini's Barber of Seville, are among my all time favorites.  But I don't always enjoy complex works.  Singing in the Thurber opera was genuinely terrifying, as the two female leads, both of whom could read music, possessed a couple of the sweetest voices I have ever heard. Which may in part explain my preference for pure "distilled" vocals.

I encountered one such piece, which remains in my top five, while sleeping. Well, not actual asleep but not really awake either.  The clock radio was set to NPRs This Country in the Morning, and as they often did, they were featuring some musical selections.  Today it was Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and I waited, just a tad apprehensively for Judy Garland's iconic rendition.  But only a few notes in I realized that whoever was singing this was better than Garland - much, much better.  If you haven't heard Eva Cassidy's version, I'll paste a link in here. Realizing that - like my perhaps minority take on Rothko - "beauty" is subjective, you may still prefer the Garland version. But do give Eva a serious listen: 

https://youtu.be/2rd8VktT8xY

It is the purity of the sound - the "non-complexity" if you will, that captures me. It is music that just floats you away. You fear that the vocal support, will drop out, fade out somehow, but it never does, and you wonder how she can do that, and then you wish she would never stop. And it is that purity of sound that comes through on this next piece. 

Amazing Grace/My Chains are Gone  was recommended to me by a student in one of my media classes. This version is done by a woman's group from Brigham Young University called Noteworthy. I think this link is the cleanest path to them, but they too are worth the search: https://byurecords.lnk.to/HowSweetSoundID

Those works, among a few others brings me to this thought: “Beauty induces a spontaneous inhalation.” And yes, at first glance that may seem to say the same thing as the old saw; “I don’t know much about art, but I know it when I see it.”  But version one uses bigger, albeit fewer words, hence you would use the second version if you were being paid by the word. However, word count is not really the only difference. Let’s break it down a bit - a close reading if you will.

“Induces.”  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, when something “induces” something, it acts upon the will to lead us to a specific behavior. So in our brief version beauty “acts upon the will.” We don’t choose to take a deep breath, beauty "induces" the behavior.

"Spontaneous." Coming freely and without premeditation or effort.

"Inhalation." The act of inhaling or breathing in.

Put them together and what have you got? Bibity, bopity, Boo? You have something - in our immediate context, a piece of music - that literally takes your breath away, leaves you gasping. And while at the moment we are talking about music, beauty can arise from any stimulus. It can be found in something created by an artist in any medium or genre. It can be, and often is, found in the natural world - from microscopic particles, to the latest high resolution images of a black hole currently making its way across the internet. So can anything be beautiful if beauty is defined by a spontaneous subjective reaction to some external stimulus? Was Ann Freedman's declaration of the forged Rothko as "beautiful" legitimate? Possibly. But other aspects of her assessment give me pause.

For me to be party to "enabling beauty," the created stimulus to which I am reacting, and which I wish to enable, must manifest some combination of three other characteristics: awareness, honesty and intention. And it important to note that notion of "created stimulus." Awareness, honesty and intention applied to occurrences in the natural world take us into the world of theology and metaphysics - is there intentional beauty in a sunset, a rose, in a baby's smile, in your lover's eyes? You can see why I don't want to go there. But those notions certainly can be brought to bear on works created specifically to engage the mind - and the pocketbook - of an audience, be they a patron or a target demographic.

Let me simplify. Ann Freeman's declaration of the "beauty" of her forged Rothko loses credibility because most of the evidence implies that she was aware that the work was dishonest and was created with the sole intention of defrauding wealthy collectors.

Problematically, while that simplification resolves most of the ethical complexities in The Case of The Lady and the Forger, it leaves the "beauty" of the forged painting in limbo. The artist, Pei-Shen Qian, is apparently somewhat of a genius [see https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/nyregion/struggling-immigrant-artist-tied-to-80-million-new-york-fraud.html?] able to forge a number of contemporary artists at a level that fooled a number of "experts." 

 So what of the works themselves? If upon seeing one of these works I experience a spontaneous inhalation. Is that work - for me - truly beautiful? Do I have to be aware that a work - in any genre - is a fraud to remove a created work from my personal realm of the beautiful? Can the work itself somehow be questionable - less beautiful - because of the fraudulent chain of creation and ownership that led to its existence? I'm inclined to believe not. Can a work of art be held responsible for the motivations of the hand that created it? Again, I choose not to go there.

And if that wasn't bad enough, welcome to the world of non-fungible tokens - NFT's - a type of digital image file one of which sold at Christie's for about 70 million dollars on March 11. No actual physical "painting" changed hands, nor is the general public barred from downloading the file and printing their own version of the file. No, I do not understand. Feel free to google "JPG file Sells for 69 Million." However, I did search for the image online. I experienced no spontaneous inhalation. So for me, for the immediate future, beauty appears to be safe from the attack of the NFTs.

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The Illusion of Identity

 My father, the only centenarian I have known personally, used to tell the story of when he first took my mother home to meet his family on the family farm down in a very rural corner of southeastern South Dakota. They all thought Mom was very nice, but the betting had run high on a local gal. And someone, I was never sure just quite who, did point out that Mom was “Nicht von unserer.” Not one of ours. When my first wife and I moved to Raleigh back in 1980 many of our neighbors invited us to attend church with them. The fact that she was Jewish and I was “unchurched” (a new word for me) led to some awkward moments.

We apparently set large store by identity, there seems to be great comfort in it. Philosophical, religious, political, racial, gender, clan, whatever. The common mindset is always “us and them.” Our people. Those others. There is a great hue and cry regarding identity around the globe today. Whether the focus is hyper-local squabbles within the homeowners association, the school board, town planning commission, etc., or national, Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal, or global, East versus West, 1st World versus Developing Nations. It all boils down to “us versus them.”  I am incredibly tired of all the bickering. As the old 1961 musical put it, Stop The World, I Want to Get Off.

As a long-time fan of science fiction I like to consider a galactic perspective. I’m not quite sure I am ready to buy the veracity of the of the former Israeli Space Security Chief who asserted in a December 9, 2020 Wall Street Journal article that a “galactic federation” has long been in touch with “earth leaders” but the aliens are denying us membership because we “aren’t ready.” Still, as I look at “the news” I am inclined to seriously consider that notion. Or as Groucho Marx put it, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me for a member.”

We do, as earthlings, spend a mind-boggling amount of human lives and treasure squabbling over immature political, social, and philosophical issues - which at the core are all the same issue: “We are better than you, nah, nah, nah.” This where you stick out your tongue, put your thumbs in your ears and waggle your fingers.  “My candidate, my religion, my age group, my gender, my athletic team, my genetic heritage, my ancestors, my, my, my! Nah! Nah!” Meanwhile, the planet upon which we all, regardless of our cherished identity, must live, is going to hell in a handbag. We really, really, need to just grow up. We need to put aside our petty differences and realize that we “humanity” is singular, with only one identity. Otherwise there is no hope that the galactic federation will warn us when the asteroid is going to hit, or provide us with the space transports necessary to get us all to Earth II. 

Without coming to that realization that we are a singular identity and act like cooperating adults, well, grab your handbag ‘cause we are going to hell and taking the planet with us. For the more hopeful, that just leaves us with Elon Musk and terraforming Mars. OK. He is brilliant. A little more fine tuning on the batteries, the self-driving gizmo, and some reasonable pricing, and well, there might be a Tesla in our future. But are you really comfortable with Elon’s Mars as the only option for the future of our singular identity?

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Dreaming of the Hundred Acre Wood

.One of the great fallacies that we pass on to our children is that they can be anything they want to be. I am not talking about a unique fallacy that has dogged the children living under the age old shadows of discrimination based on race, gender or class. This fallacy of unfettered possibilities touches all children regardless of socioeconomic status, and we, their parents, their teachers and mentors are, in large part, to blame.

I suppose if there was an era when “you can be anything” came even close to being true it would have been for a tiny cluster of privileged children during the Renaissance, when the gentry were supposed to study history, art, philosophy, sport and science - as those pursuits then existed. But as we well know that was the privileged path of young males seeking to become “a Renaissance man.”  Emphasis on privileged and male. But even those favored few lived under a fallacy that is simply more obvious today.

Here is the fallacy as I see it. Our world has become so specialized that the time when a child comes even close to a truly unfettered future is reasonably measured in a mere handful of early years. Past that time the subtle slide toward specialization begins. Playgroups morph into classes - perhaps an unintended, or unrealized echo of the Renaissance model - a little bit of art, a little bit of sport and science; youngsters shepherded from class A to class B, C, D and E by parents who only 5 or 10 years previous had shared the fallacy that they too could be anything they wanted to be.

But now, as glorified chauffeurs,  they shuttle their kids from pillar to post closely watching for any indication of unique interest or ability - “Doesn’t she color well?” “See how well he uses those scissors!” - that should be encouraged by advanced classes, summer camps, and perhaps enrollment in special K-12 schools known for smoothing the way to special avenues of higher or professional education.

The, perhaps strange, image I have in my head is a bunch of young’uns jostling around on the top of a humongous water slide, dozens and dozens of slides spiral down from the top.  A sign at the top says “Take Any Slide You Want!” And the kids do. And it is often the last real choice they make, as the slide swirls them down and around until they splash down into a landing pool filled with others who made the same or very similar choices up top. You choose STEM (Science, technology, engineering and math) slides and you ended up in the big STEM  pool. Arts and music? Splash, there you are!  The Arty pool. Splash e vous! Agricultural? Splash! FFA pool. Education? Splash. Philosophy? Splash.  And so on and so forth.  

The notion is that yes, you can be anything you want. However the slippery slope is that once you step onto one of the slides - and sometimes unintentionally and at a very early age, perhaps nudged by others  - “She has a great backstroke for a six year old!” “Boy, I hope his voice doesn’t change too much!” “She can do long division in her head!” - it grows increasingly difficult to pull yourself off one slide and find your way to another. And suddenly, well if you can call 50 or 60 years "suddenly", you find yourself at the end of a long career humming that old Peggy Lee song, “Is that all there is?”

I point to myself as a sort of example. At some single digit age, not really sure exactly when, I began to demonstrate interest and tolerable competence in what we would now call “the performing arts.”  Without boring you with the related steps, that inclination led me through various high school productions, a BA in theater, MA in what was then called Radio-TV and Film, a Ph.D in Mass Communication and finally, a 45-year career teaching similar stuff in University classrooms and on the Internet. 

I'm not really complaining. It was a nice ride for the most part. Met and worked with some wonderful folks along the way with more than ordinary buffers from the inevitable jerks. However, I must admit that in my last few weeks before retirement I had cause to go over to the Design School to return a DVD.  As I walked through the halls I looked at the very cool projects the students and faculty had created, "Hummm." I thought, "Maybe I should have .  .  .  nah."

Anyhow, here in the early months of retirement I find myself at the top of another water slide. "You can do anything you want!"  Well, I probably need another, more mature analogy. You could break something on those slides. But the point is I don't have to go to work, go to meetings, publish or perish, defend the value of my disciple to my colleagues, deans, and other administrati. And there is great freedom in that reality. But there is also a sort of "option-phobia." When you are a kid poised atop the "You can be anything you want" waterslide, the water seems smooth and welcoming. It isn't until the end of the ride that you come to know the rocks and rapids that needed to be negotiated.  So, off you leapt.  Retirement, on the other hand, comes with the opportunity for reflection - although "opportunity" may not be the right word. Necessity maybe?

Once, many years ago, I asked my "musey room" buddy what his notion of heaven was. His reply was "A comfortable room with an inexhaustible supply of novels." If I were treat retirement as a prelude to heaven and ask myself what my notion of a heavenly retirement would be I would probably respond along the lines of : "A huge studio with an awesome view, an inexhaustible supply of paper, markers, large format printers and scanners, clay, sculpting tools, a kiln, powerful computers with excellent and totally intuitive imaging software, cameras, a bed that didn't hurt my hips, and the ability to sleep whenever I wanted and never having to get up in the morning. We can talk about food after my nap.” The fact that neither his heaven nor my imagined retirement are realistically feasible may explain the necessity for, and evolution of, religion.  OK, where was I? Drifted a little off track there.

Oh, yeah. The intimidating notion of retirement.  Here is, strangely, where I am at the moment: looking for The Hundred Acre Wood.  And in my mind reaching the Hundred Acre Wood means to reach a state of childlike Harmony. Not childish - self-centered, whining - harmony; no, childlike Harmony. And there is a world of difference. No, that is not quite right. There is a lifetime of difference. Let me explain. Childlike harmony is synonymous with with inner peace, with enlightenment.  It is not a foregone conclusion of a life lived. It is a goal. It is, perhaps strangely, for me the essence of the Hundred Acre Wood as depicted in Winnie the Pooh.

The Pooh stories, and here I mean the original versions as opposed to the “Disneyfications” which do bother me. But that is another issue. So, the Pooh stories are obviously entertaining tales for kids and need not be taken any further. But if you do choose to take them further, Pooh is a rather enlightened Bear, blessed with the ability to live in a gently curious perpetual present. Tolkien’s Tom Bombadil strikes me as a uniquely parallel character, a cheerful gentle soul, yet one whose home serves as the locus of a unique, insightful power.

Bombadil would be comfortable in the Hundred Acre Wood. He and Pooh would stroll along - to quote the Loggins and Messina tune House at Pooh Corner - “counting all the bees in the hive, chasing all the clouds from the sky.” More precisely looking for enlightenment in the simple things in life. I would like to join them. I can think of no better way to spend my retirement. But I am uncertain of the path.

How far do we have to go before we find the place that allows us to turn inward? That does not mean “the end of the road.” Rather the idea is that we find a spot for reflection; one that expresses what we have learned to this point, and points a path to refinement. A stepping back from the easel, closing the journal, looking away from the sculpture in its current state. A distanced deciding of what all should remain and what gets smoothed away. This insight is, perhaps, what I hope to find in the Hundred Acre Wood of my retirement.

Silly old bear.

Illustration by EH Shepard @ 1926

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Racist Art on My Desk?

I don't really think so.  Here is the image that sits there.  I have talked about it before here on the Wall, but if that post predates some of you let me give you its history.  Like millions of folks around the world, my folks read Dr. Seuss books to me as a child and I read them to my kids.  The "Ran Lab" image above resulted from a bit of correspondence I had with the good Dr. Seuss.  One of his many books is "If I Ran the Zoo."  Which begins:

"Its a pretty good Zoo,"

Said young Gerald McGrew.

And the fellow who runs it

Seems proud of it too.

But if I ran the zoo,

Said young Gerald McGrew,

I'd make a few changes,

That's just what I'd do . ."

Dr. Seuss, 1950

And Seuss goes on to describe and illustrate those changes.  Well, with imitation being the most sincere form of flattery, and cloning being all the rage at the time.,  I wrote "If I Ran the Lab" around 2000. It began:

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

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

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

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

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

I’d splice up some genes not halfway so drab

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

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

    Dr. Schrag @ 2000

And I go on to describe those "strange genotypes." At the risk of offending someone somewhere, I would be glad to send you a copy of the full manuscript. But anyhow, I sent a copy off to Dr. Seuss's publisher and a few weeks later the image above arrived in the mail. I thought it quite cool. I also sent a copy to Gary Larson asking if he would like to do the illustrations. Alas, without similar success. In his defense he was in is "retired phase" at the time. No doubt if I sent it to him now . . . anyhow.

So you can imagine, I am not among those applauding the recent announcement that several of the Seuss books will be pulled from  publication for containing racist images.  My objections do not spring from my brief contact with the author, but rather from a Distilled Harmony view of art and culture in general.

Let me explain. Again a brief synopsis of Distilled Harmony. It is a world view that rests on four tenets of descending dominance. First, foster harmony the dominant tenet which demands that we seek the most harmonic path in our lives, decisions and behaviors. Second, enable beauty, which calls upon us to create, or support the creation of, beautiful entities in the traditional realms of the arts. Third is distill complexity, seeking the clearest view of and or explanation of the issues we confront in our lives. Einstein once asserted that if you could not explain something clearly to a child, you did not truly understand it yourself. This tenet admonishes us to seek that clarity. And fourth, oppose harm. In 1867 John Stuart Mill opined, " Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing" Or in the version often attributed to Burke and Churchill; "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Either way you get the idea - when harmony is attacked by evil, one is compelled to act.

The current Seuss kerfuffle is simply the latest touch point among many which, I believe, result in large part from differing perspectives of cultural history. What one group sees as an offensive reminder of long standing cultural abuse, another group defines as a precious, or at least insightful, cultural artifact. One group's Foster Harmony confronts another's Oppose Harm.

You see, I am confused. I don’t quite understand the rules of contemporary cultural sensitivity. And to stretch it a bit if we try to eliminate all the “negative” depictions of cultural differences from all cultures in all eras, don’t we eventually arrive at a “Stepford Wives” cookie cutter model of humanity and culture? Like the Roswell big-headed grey entities with big eyes who sit in as a model for all aliens? And who gets to decide what is “a cultural artifact” and what is “demeaning stereotype”? Why does a young Dolly Parton get away with choosing the town tramp as her role model - as she tells it in her autobiography - when a girl growing up now with that model in mind would be seen as the tramp? So is “cultural legitimacy” merely code for commercial success?

Apparently not. I did some reading regarding the purging of the Dr. Seuss books. Talk about commercial success! Wikipedia cites 600 million books in 20 different languages. Furthermore, his Butter Battle Book and The Lorax are both books with pro-social messages from which all kids would benefit. So do we just get to pick the low-hanging fruit? If I go back over the 20-odd year history of the Wall, I can find a bunch of bits I'd like to change or edit out. But ethically, I feel obligated to leave them in. They are who I was then - if that make sense.  They reflect my history.

And speaking of history, I'm thinking this whole debate would benefit from a consideration of history. Consider a cultural "truism." This one is attributed to a variety of sources - Santayana, Burke, Churchill - and goes something like this,  “Those who do not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it.” It seems to me equally true that those who are kept in ignorance of their past are likely to repeat it. If we keep scrubbing away all evidence of the cultural wars and social differences in our history, it will be as if they never happened, and hence there will be nothing left from which to learn. What Civil War? Who was this King guy? Timothy McWho? Neil Armstrong? Wasn't he a quarterback for the Browns? Ada Lovelace? Wasn't she some porn star?

Let us consider a couple of "texts:" The images that led to rescinding the "sullied six" Seuss books and the beloved hymn Amazing Grace. The first were written and illustrated by Theodore Seuss Geisel in the early days of the 20th century (1937), who later went on to write and illustrate, throughout the century, various sensitive, prosocial books (e.g. The Butter Battle Book (1984), The Lorax (1971), Oh, The Places You'll Go, (1990). Amazing Grace was written in the late 1700s by John Newton, a notorious slaver who sold hundreds, if not thousands of Africans into slavery, and continued to do so for a while after the famous "conversion" that lead to his penning the single hymn.

Perhaps you can sense the source of my confusion. Three self-proclaimed guardians of social visual purity take it upon themselves to pass judgement on a decades long career that did far more to foster harmony among the young people of the world than the relatively unknown works of the artists who called for the cancelling. Yet, the racist author of Amazing Grace gets a pass, one assumes because of the work's religious affiliation and widespread popularity.  Wouldn't it seem more logical to ban all performances of the racist penned hymn Amazing Grace and leave Seuss alone? Realistically both restrictions, on the "sullied six" and a proposed ban on Amazing Grace are foolish manifestations of the divisions currently strangling our nation.

We need to reign in some of the excesses of the current culture police, for it is their supercilious over-reaching that gives comfort to radicals like Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who attacked the Capital, and who - with x-president Trump leading the way - are already using the banning of the "sullied six" to "prove" their claims that left-wing radicals want to chip away at "real American freedoms." 

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Making Faces

Hello All -

Hope you are all well, wearing masks, washing hands, and getting your vaccine jabs, etc., so that we can all actually meet face-to-face when it is safe for us all.  It is times like these when I wish I could be standing in front of a classroom full of a couple hundred students. I understand that the young and uneducated are refusing to get vaccinated. So I could say "OK, you are mostly young, and your presence here indicates at least the intention to become educated. So for those of you who are thinking about refusing to be vaccinated let me quote one of my favorite grad school professors - 'Have you checked your brain at the door?' You are at a university, one known primarily for science and research. Believe the overwhelming research, roll up your sleeve and get jabbed. That is the shortest route to the bars on Hillsborough street without endangering your friends."

But for the most part y'all on the wall aren't so much as in a college classroom as you are trying to remember what it was like to be in college classroom (- : !  So let us get on to today's real topic: Making Faces!  You have seen some of the current versions, so I thought I would give you a "Behind the Scenes" look at the most recent version of the Faces, as I may be shifting gears soon.

Like the majority of my drawings that are not based on photographs, Faces start with a blank sheet of paper - in this case 14x17 98 lb. I usually start with the eyes since that is where my own eyes are drawn when I look at faces. As you may have noticed the eyes on my recent face seem somehow angry. That is not intentional, nor is it the only kind of face I draw.  Here is an example of a friendlier face:

However, this version did start out with some more of those more angry faces:

Which led to the “in progress” images

And the final image below:

What I am interested in right know is experimenting with a series of eyes that can express more positive emotions!

What Bob Ross Painting Can Teach Us About Writing

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The seriously inclement weather - more than a foot of snow and temperatures hovering somewhere south of zero degrees Fahrenheit - had knocked out the Dish system, so we were reduced to watching previously recorded fare. We settled on Good Will Hunting. A tough choice for me as I have a hard time watching Robbin Williams. “Why,” I get caught up in, “why with all that talent do you kill yourself?” But that is a distraction for another time.

This time I found myself intrigued by a question that Williams’s character, psychology prof Sean Macguire, asked Will, Matt Damian’s character: “Do you have someone with whom you can talk about anything?” or words to that effect. The question is of particular impact as we find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic that significantly compromises any kind of interpersonal communication - from trivial to deeply introspective.  If we are truly trying to help prevent the spread of the virus, and protect ourselves and our loved ones, our face-to-face contact with real live people is extremely limited. We can talk on the phone, or avail ourselves of one of the rapidly evolving “on screen” applications which allow us to interact with another, or several other, faces or felines on a screen. Somehow, I don’t think that was what Williams was asking for when he wanted to know if Will had someone with whom he could talk about anything. With whom nothing  was out of bounds.

We all know that we are supposed to have such people in our lives, but I guess that way down deep, we rarely do. If for no other reason than to spare the feelings of those for whom we care most deeply. But the question got me thinking about how we almost always create some version of that unique individual somewhere in our lives - whether a real live person or, these days, some sort of "artificial intelligence" - AI Me!  But those digital buddies are wearing pretty thin - and in reality always have.  Move your cursor if you remember Microsoft's animated Paperclip.

I also happened to be listening to Eric Larson's The Splendid and the Vile,  an audio book about Winston Churchill's time as British Prime Minister during WWII.  I was taken by how often Larson would write that so-and-so "remarked to their diary," as though the diary was an actual person - the kind Robin Williams was looking for in his question in Good Will Hunting: "Someone with whom you can talk about anything." And, my addition, who you know will never reveal any part of those conversations to another soul.  So I thought a little more about the kinds of "reflective expression" available to us today. The following struck me.

The diary written on paper, secured with one of those flimsy keys and hidden somewhere physically secure from the prying eyes of others, remains the most secure form of private "self-talk" - as those in my discipline are wont to call it. The internet has rendered all electronic communication porous.  Whether "secret" government agencies, or more overt commercial entities gathering personal information to be sold to various marketing firms, nothing - let me repeat that - nothing - we enter into our computers, phones or tablets is secure. Only the data's lack of perceived value keeps it secure. Once some entity feels there is some kind of value attached to our data, and it is worth their time, money and energy to seek it out, they will go get it. I'm not trying to creep you out here, just telling you like it is. Fortunately, nobody really cares that much about our private information.  But do keep in mind that all social networks - Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and the latest "cool" network favored by the young - are not at all private nor secure, because their users, who number in the multi-millions, are valuable markets for someone. So, if you really want secure communication think "paper and ink." If you take the next step to envelope and stamp, you must realize that you have taken an important step away from privacy. 

Ah, yes. I hear you. What the heck does all this have to do with Bob Ross's painting? [For those of you who would change that sentence to "Who the heck is Bob Ross?" you could start here:

https://www.minnetrista.net/bobrossexperience. Or just Google him.]

Let me admit - it is a bit of a stretch.  OK, it is a very big stretch, one that came to me in the tiny hours - not long after having watched yet another one of his videos:  "It's a great day here, and I hope it is wherever you are. I think we'll do a happy Fall painting today.  I have my usual pre-stretched . . . ."

If you have seen the shows you know how it goes from there. The relevant takeaway is that Ross paints [sadly now, painted] for a particular audience and from a particularly, gentle, perspective. Furthermore he spoke to you personally, conversationally, encouragingly, in a soporific voice: "You can do this!" "See I knew you could." "Isn't that a beautiful color?" "We don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents." Folks often report simply listening to the program with their eyes closed - a calming meditative experience. Ross creates an experience designed for a particular audience - those of us who seek him out - with a particular intent - yes, to teach us his method of painting - but perhaps more importantly to teach us to view the world through his eyes, which to my mind sounds and looks a whole lot like "Foster Harmony" and "Enable Beauty."

So let us think for a moment about various writing genre that focus primarily on either self-expression or sharing one's impression of your life and how to live in it. I find myself thinking mostly about diaries, autobiographies and memoirs. I define them thus:

Diaries. As mentioned in the Larson work on Churchill, these are works that are, or are believed to be, totally private, totally personal. They are intended for the author's eyes only. A diary serves as that special someone Robbins was seeking in Good Will Hunting; someone with whom you can talk about anything, but that someone is yourself. This is where you write those things you would share with no one. A diary is that space for the total honesty you think you could share with others, but really don't.

Autobiographies. We can think of these as the first cousin to diaries, in that the intent is to share the story of your life but with the realization - and the intent - that they will be read by others. These works often begin with the author aiming for the honesty of a diary, but quickly coming to realize that they need, for various reasons, to do some shading or editing along the way - sometimes to the extent of employing a ghost writer. Check out the tiny print on the second or third page of the few pages before the "real book" actually starts, in a bunch of "celebrity" biographies and you will often find phrases like "as told to" or "with so-and-so." These are the footprints left by the helping pens of "real writers." But often the honest intent and marketing ploy of most autobiographies is that this is the author telling the version of their own life story that they wish to share with a public audience.

Memoirs. These recount our lives as we choose to remember them. They often start out intending to be autobiographies or even diaries, but somewhere along the line they morph away from the life we lived into the life we wished we had lived. Vignettes that depict the way we wished the stories of our lives would have played out, should have played out if only . . .

OK, time to hop back to Bob Ross. Say what? No, really. During almost every episode - usually when he has finished using "little criss-cross strokes" to create fairly distinct bands of color across either the sky or the bottom of a painting Ross will instruct us to take "a dry, very dry, 2-inch brush and blend these bands of color so you can't tell where one leaves off and another begins."

When writing - particularly in self-expressive writing - we need to think of diaries, autobiographies and memoirs as colors. Each has different strengths and value. Each can contribute a particular band of color across our writing. The idea is not to choose one or the other, but rather to blend them so you cannot tell where one stops and the other begins, and accentuate those that best address your objectives. Ross also treats us to, and introduces us to, a palette of several hues - 5 to 8 or so - across his huge palette. As he continues the painting, he pulls paint from each of those distinct colors and mixes them on the brush to blend exactly the right shade for the portion of the piece he is working on. "Be careful not to use too much blue. It will eat up your crimson and you will be in agony city!" 

Again we need to think of diaries, autobiographies and memoirs as contributing particular colors to our writing. Each has different strengths and value and can making different contributions to our writing. A word of warning however, of particular importance in self-expressive writing. Do not pretend you are writing in diary voice if you are really attempting autobiography, or attempt to pass off a memoir as either diary or autobiography. Integrity is really all you have going for you in self-expressive writing. Don't squander it trying to fool your audience with cheap thrills.

This is, I admit, a rather strange cross-media leap of faith, and one that will make absolutely no sense at all until you have watched at least a few episodes of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. Give it a try and let me know what you think. :-)

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Schrag Wall: The Real Covid Committee: Take Two

 [This, too, is satire. Not true. I still feel no inclination to run for office.]

Well, the committee has met. And after failing to come to any agreement as to beverages or snacks, we all just sat around the table and looked at each other:

After several hours of silent communion we took another approach. Everyone was given a pad of paper and several markers. We each drew what we felt the virus looked like and drafted a short paragraph describing the origin of the virus. The winning image appears below. The scientific name of the virus is covinoperegrinus19. It is genetically similar to  peregrine falcon, except much, much smaller and visually more distinctive. We are not yet prepared to advance a theory as to what our observations might mean for confronting the virus, but we are leaning toward designing a tiny, tiny Great Horned Owl, one of the peregrines few natural enemies. We will keep you posted.

Schrag Wall: The Real Covid Committee

[Having read with increasing amazement the incredibly bizarre things that folks like QAnon believe I need to point out right up front that this post is satire. It is not true. I am doing it just for fun and have no desire to run for public office. - RLS]

I had hoped that given the results of the recent presidential election and the superhyped not so Super Bowl we had seen the end of "fake news" and "alternate realities." Sadly this is not true, particularly when it comes to the covid pandemic. I am staggered with the gobbledeguk that various pointed-headed science types are asking us to believe. It is as if their decades of research and education entitles them to opinions that are more credible than those I have gleaned from obscure web sites and fortune cookies from my favorite Chinese restaurants.  I finally couldn't take it any more so I assembled my own team of experts. I have shared earlier versions of these esteemed colleagues with a select group of you here on the Wall whose qualifications as experts are unquestionable - so I did't question them.

So let us meet the Real Covid Committee. [Fearing unfounded reprisals from the aforementioned pointed-headed science types, their real names have been omitted leaving only their Covid Face #s.]

Covid Face#1: Chair of the committee. No educational background, but showed exceptional promise in pre-K coloring.

Covid Face # 2 shares many of the same qualifications as #1 but not to such a high degree.

Covid Face 3 and 4. No qualifications to speak of. They were sitting at the table next to us and we needed 2 more members to break any ties. The fourth wants to fix it's face. Perhaps we can get a peek at a subsequent post.

So those are the committee members. I will report our conclusions in a subsequent message.