Synesthesia and Creativity

Back around 1970 - so junior year at Kalamazoo College - I was assigned the book Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood which Wikipedia says "was the first book to consider video as an art form." I'm a little leery of "firsts" and "uniquelys" and other such absolute claims, but it is a very cool book.  I think it is in a box back in Raleigh, which means it survived nine or ten “bookshelf purges” in which I would clear out books I deemed “no longer important.”  I would stack them out side my office door with a sign reading “Help Yourself.”  I think Expanded Cinema made the cuts so many times because it has an excellent introduction by Buckminster Fuller, but even more so because it introduced me to the whole notion of synesthesia.

I think of synesthesia as a neurological railroad roundhouse, sort of like in Thomas the Tank Engine, where the trains get shuffled onto the proper track. To greatly simplify, vibrations come into the ear, strike the ear drum and then make their way to the roundhouse - AKA the brain - which shuffles those impulses onto the right track and we hear music. The eyes do the same with visual data, nose to smell, skin to feel, etc. Well, people with synesthesia - synesthetes - have some unusual cross overs in the road house. For some synesthetes the letters blue come into the eyes black but the brain sees blue. Some synesthetes smell coffee and see specific images.  Sounds can have shapes and colors. It is a fascinating condition, I certainly hesitate to call it a disability.  Especially after watching a couple of recent episodes on Curiosity Stream.

The series is called “Secrets of the Brain” and it is hosted by Dr. Jack Lewis who is out to “learn everything there is to know about the brain!” Well, you know how I feel about absolutes, but he looks pretty young - maybe early thirties - so we’ll cut him a little slack. Especially since since the last two episodes, on synesthesia and creativity are aimed at combining those two of my personal favorite curiosities.

I have already talked about synesthesia, but another episode dealt with creativity. And, as a standard device in the series, Dr. Jack likes to seek out folks whose neurological conditions are the result of other than normal development. In this episode Dr. Lewis encounters a man who, as the result of a stroke develops “sudden creative out put.” Previously the gentleman had no interest in the arts, but post stroke becomes obsessed with the fine arts - painting in particular. He leaves his old life and becomes a fine artist, producing some admirable works, but is unable to explain where the ideas for his works come from.

OK, let’s stop messing around with background information and get to the important part: me. I have been doodling for as long as I was forced to sit in a classroom with nothing but a piece of paper - or to tell the truth, the border of a textbook - and a marker of some type to entertain me. There was a brief, very brief, time when I worried if drawing in a hymnal was a sin. But when I began to help my Catholic buddy make up sins for confession, the whole question became moot. Truth was I just doodled because it was fun and calming. No doubt an argument for putting me somewhere on “the autism spectrum” there, but secretly I’m thinking most creative people are.

Anyhow my drawing, and PPP images are a bit strange, but I am now leaning towards the notion that - having no other rational explanation for them - I have decided that they are a combination of synesthesia and the kind of creativity Dr. Lewis is playing with in his Curiosity Stream series. So I’m going to take you through one image from a  “synestcreative” perspective.  I call it “The Rose,” but in truth it is a cabbage.

As I have mentioned before I have fallen victim to the “billions and billions” of images trap of digital photography. I have more images than makes any kind of sense, but my experience of reviewing them is different from the social hell of sitting in someone’s living room watching the slides of their most recent vacation to Disneyland. If you are too young to remember “slides” go light a candle or make a donation to some deserving charity.

Rather than beginning to drool and slide out of my seat, when I watch my collected images they shift shape - like digital shape shifters.  Like this first image - when viewed statically and knowing it is from a garden show it becomes pretty obvious that it is a red cabbage.

But as I concentrate of the image more intensely its "cabbageness" gets a little slippery, and in my mind it becomes much more like a rose. And having just finished working on the sunflower image “Beyond Yellow,”  RoseCabbage begins to suggest that pieces of it should be removed. And I say "RoseCabbage suggests" because I really am not aware of participating in the selection.  That is not to say that it works like a Ouija board with the image taking control of my hand and moving it around.  Rather I just sort of stare at the image and eventually something feels right. So I draw dark lines around the part of the image to be removed, and blank them out. Like this:

Then RoseCabbage and I work together to decide what designs should go in each of the blanks. And I put the designs in like this:

The next step is adding color to the designs, and RoseCabbage and I will work on that soon. Selecting colors that feel right from this collection. I again say RoseCabbage and I because it is a group effort. A lot of sitting and staring before I pick up a marker.  That step takes a long, long time. And I will share the final result with you when it is done. 

The point is that I think the process by which my drawings come to be is really a combination of three neurological processes, and it would be an error to think of them as separate, or to try to cleanly unwind them.  The initial selection of the primary image is dominated by, but not totally dependent on sights I have seen or images I already possess. I mentioned in the previous post that I have a fairly clear picture in my head of what "home" should look like, yet have no such image in my collection. So it is clear that I will be looking about me for a possible stand in. So creativity plays a large role here. Once I have decided on the primary image the rest of the creative process seems to blend, at least synesthesia with perhaps a touch of healthy autism. 

No doubt some grad student - in art, psychology, or psychiatry - is out there hammering away on a dissertation that will explain all this. But, until then, I think I can be satisfied to just enjoy myself.

Homelessness

Being well aware of the millions of people around the world without a roof over their heads or even walls to support a roof, for whom both water and food are  precarious necessities, for whom vaccines are either rumors or myths, not just for Covid-19, but for measles, mumps, and the other diseases creeping back into the 21st century under attack by privileged 1st world anti-vaxxers; yes, I have some, admittedly second-hand, knowledge of what it actually means to be homeless. Yet, while living in a solid, well-insulated structure with central heating, air-conditioning, indoor plumbing, and electrical outlets per code, every 6 feet along each wall, and a dependable internet connection, I still claim to be “homeless.”

Now wait a minute. Let me explain. Mine is a completely different kind of "homelessness," one that has nothing to do, thank god, with a lack of those creature comforts listed above. Rather it has to do with a more ephemeral feeling of “being at home,” of “belonging,” of “well being.” I have a colleague who moved from the mountains of Salt Lake City, Utah to Raleigh, North Carolina, a city perched equidistant between the mountains and the ocean on the east coast. Upon arriving here, after trekking across the continent, “Never,” she claimed, “have I felt more at home.” I envy her, for never have I felt that sense of being at home.

I think it is my mother’s fault. Her’s and her books. For me, being “at home” has almost nothing to do with where I currently reside. Were “home” to be defined by place of residence, I actually have lived in several places long enough for them to take on the quality of “homeness.” I was born in Springfield, Ohio and lived there - with the exception of two years spent in Vienna, Austria - until I got married in 1969. So what, 20 years? Then there was a span of almost 40 years in Raleigh, N.C., teaching at NC State. It was an enjoyable tenure for the most part, but never, to quote John Denver, “Coming home to a place he’d never been before.” And this is where blaming my mother comes in. She was, more than my father, the one who established “reading” as the activity that trumped all others.

Done your homework? I’m reading. OK.

Cleaned up your room? I’m reading. OK.

Coming to dinner? Let me finish this chapter. OK.

And, of course, you could bring your book to the dinner table, where everyone was reading.

The problem was, and is, that the worlds, the “homes,” created in our books were inevitably more wonderful, more engaging, more exciting than the physical homes, the constructed towns, the bustling cities and the day-to-days lives in which we actually lived. Literature - and of course, theater - set the bar of “home” impossibly high.

Another wrinkle in my admittedly distorted notion of “home” was that it was defined more by the people and the relationships surrounding me in my books, than the structures, locales, and relationships in which I happened to be a flesh and blood participant. Again, fiction cranked the bar way beyond Olympic level. Who could really compete for Dulcinea? Perhaps I could if my name were Bond, James Bond. 

And there were those times, as I assume there are for any serious actor, author or playwright, when the line between the fiction you are creating and your “real life” becomes uncomfortably vague. Truth be told, that fuzziness was a major reason that, despite some very tempting opportunities to “do,” I chose instead to “teach.” But I digress.

None of that is to say that I have never encountered places where, as we say in the South, “I might could” choose to make my “home.”  Cabin #12 in the pines at Tower Hill Camp, in Sawyer, Michigan, was one such place. It has the additional appeal of being close to the woods where the ashes of my parents and my older brother lie scattered. However, when I last saw it a year or two ago, it appeared a touch dilapidated. Damaged perhaps during some ill-planned fit of renovation?  The garden of the Hotel Monna Lisa in Florence, Italy, also seems imminently “home-ish.” Still, I’m thinking it would probably get a bit pricey as a permanent residence, and the mosquitoes are killer after sundown. Hmmm. There must be others. Maybe they will come to me later.

So that’s what I mean when I claim to be homeless. Sites in the “real world” fall short of the “home” of my imagination. I have friends who are quite skilled at representational painting, and it is at times like this that I most envy them that talent. I can see the "home place" fairly clearly in my mind’s eye. It is on a secluded lake. Maybe another home or two are scattered around the lake, but distant and hidden by the trees. Too far to walk, but reachable by boat, kayak, or inner tube. My “home” has a boat house. Both structures are rustic. The lake is hemmed in by pines, a few hardwood’s scattered further back. It is northerly enough for snow between Thanksgiving and New Years. Strangely enough, not too far away are some excellent restaurants, shopping, etc., but not enough to attract tourists. Also strangely, there are people around me with whom I share pleasant memories. However, as is common in some of my dreams, I’m not positive just whom they are or the details of the memories we share. And then there is the fact that the real people who are precious to me in my real life would find my “perfect home” excessively bucolic for long term occupancy.  Hence, another major barrier to somehow, sometime, losing my feeling of homelessness.

As I said, this is one of those times when I wish I had some skill at realistic drawing. If I could get the place and the people in my mind down on paper I might be able to recognize my “home” and find a way to get there. Or at least I could create an image where, Denver again, I could “come home to a place I’d never been before.” Until then, I’ll take comfort in Bilbo’s assurance, “The road goes ever on and on.”

The Tech Billionaires are Grabbing The Low Hanging Fruit

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OK, so Jeff Bezos rode his rather phallic contraption 10 minutes up to “sort of” space. Sir Richard Branson flew his more Si-fi friendly looking craft earlier, but a bit lower, up into weightlessness. Elon Musk’s SpaceX machines are making these one-offs seem positively humdrum by routinely ferrying astronauts up to the International Space Station. And in addition SpaceX just sent four “citizen astronauts” on a sort of joy ride around the globe. Cool, I guess, as a pilot for a Reality TV Show “Billionaires in Space,” or something.

Forgive me if I am not terribly impressed. These efforts, from a transportation perspective, failed to raise my eyebrows, as I made my way at heart-stopping speeds - sometimes approaching 12 miles an hour - along I-85, one of America’s “super highways.” Come on guys, give me a break. From a transportation perspective Musk’s hyper loop technology is far more impressive as it, at least, moves regular folks from point A to point B far more efficiently than current systems. Of course there is the problem that that current system just moves us from from one part of LA to another. Not a big deal here in Chicagoland.

The “UFO videos” recently released by the government (see https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-military-intelligence-60-minutes-2021-08-29/ ) seem to indicate that the “My space ship is faster than your space ship” horse has already left the barn. I mean those dudes or dudettes or gender free space entities seem to be strolling around in speeds measured in many multiples of light years. Eat your heart out NASCAR. Which makes me think that rather than messing around with what seem to be sort of "Kitty Hawk" efforts when viewed in the big "transportation" picture, we ought to be putting serious thought and serious research funding into Captain Kirk’s prophetic command: “Beam me up Scotty!”

Yeah. Teleportation. Perhaps quantum entanglement might be a more fertile research field to plow than nuclear fusion or giant solar sails, at least when it comes to space travel. Although, the pandemic has made the idea of terrestrial teleporting across town an attractive notion. But with teleportation global holidays would be back again! Teleporting to Florence or Buenos Aires would beat the heck out of airports!

I know it sounds a bit like Asimov sci-fi stuff. But let me relate a quick family story. When my father received his Ph.D in sociology from the University of Chicago back in - I believe it was 1945. I’d have to look in the lining of his academic gown which I wore to every commence until my own retirement last year. The date is on a label in there somewhere. Anyhow somehow Grandmother Schrag was persuaded to travel from the tiny farming community of Freeman, South Dakota, to the wicked city of Chicago to witness her son’s big day. Dad, wanting to show her the sights took her to an upscale department store, maybe Carson Pirie Scott & Company, maybe Marshall Fields, not sure which.  Wherever, things were going along nicely until Dad led her to the escalator to show her even more wonders on the second floor. I do not know if the words “instrument of the devil” ever escaped the lips of that devote Mennonite matron, but the gist of the matter was clear. "Stairs did not move," and nothing in this fancy, frilly city could induce her to set foot on them.

The point is that we tend to associate certain classes of technology to meet specific needs. Writing moved from sticks in clay, to carving in stone, to marks on bamboo and papyrus, ink on hides, rag paper, to typewriters, printers, and now these screens. Transportation moved from riding on critters to the critters hauling various evolutions of wheels that moved people from place to place, eventually assisting with over land and water and through the air, and now into space. The problem is that each evolution seems to put blinders on the path forward. The question gets to be “How do we improve on that recent innovation? How do I build a better wheeled vehicle? To now, how do I build a better rocket-propelled space ship? How do I pick people up in one place and deliver them to another, like a load of potatoes? And research dollars and creative, innovative energy moves down that predetermined, blinder-obscured path. And the billionaires hustle down that path.

Hauling potatoes or people from point A to point B is the easy path. That’s transportation. Making a potato vanish from point A and the reappear at point B hundreds of miles or light years away - now that is impressive, that is teleportation. Difficult? OMG!! That’s transportation evolution on steroids! Beyond the transition from wooden ladders to moving stairs, from paths in the forest to moving walkways in the airport! Teleportation says no more low hanging fruit that dangle in front of the blinders on the straight and narrow part before us. It means, at least, taking off the blinders and considering the radical new questions we need to address even before we can consider the best route to the answers.

So beam us up Scotty, to infinity and beyond!  Etc,. etc., etc.

Foolish Faux Filing

 Having just finished a few hours scanning through a few decades of photos stored on my external hard drive, It is probably a good time to share this post that I drafted late one night last week. . . , or last month, or last year. Or some other time.

I suppose my first clear recollection of this lifelong character flaw was in 7th grade. I came home after school one day, picked up a blank reporters notebook and a ballpoint pen.  Then I took a stack of 33 lps of classical music and put them on the turntable, hit start and began to write. Free verse, blank verse, some kind of verse. And I wrote until the music stopped or I ran out of paper - I forget which. Point is I sort of lost track of the notebook. I have stumbled across it a few times in the last 50 or 60 years. Amazed each time that I had it in my hands again. And then promptly mislaid it again.

It is a strange flaw that, if I had a shrink, I would certainly bring to his or her attention. It has grown more pronounced as the world has become more purely digital.  A bit of Sharon  Vaughn’s classic country song, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys goes like this:

“Pickin' up hookers instead of my pen,

I let the words of my youth fade away.” 

Well, hookers have never been part of my existence, but I can certainly relate to the fear of losing “the words of my youth” or the words of my middle age, or the words of my golden years, or any of my words. It’s not that my words are all worth enshrining on vellum in blue or blue-black ink, as Miss Manners would instruct us for important correspondence, but occasionally there is some good stuff there that I would like to keep.

So I have become a digital hyper-saver. I have a DropBox account - maybe two  and I compose and save these Wall posts in Evernote, as well as saving copies in a separate file, before publishing them through Blogger where they are also saved.  And then there is my stand-alone 8TB hard drive on which I save, not only back-ups of those files, but every time I get a new computer I copy the entire hard drive onto my stand alone drive. I think I have copies of about 5 different hard drives stashed there. And we aren’t taking just Wall files, we are talking correspondence, art, music, poetry, research papers, books, etc. If I created it and it exists in digital form, it is on that drive. And as I mentioned at the very beginning of this post I sometimes get lost in there.

I know, doc, that isn’t normal, and I am working on it. But that isn’t the worst part. You see, I’m not really sure where on all those devices - online or stand alone - where any of that stuff is, or even what all is there. Sometimes when I am bored I will click over to the hard drive and browse around. [See above.] The other day I came across copies of a mini-website I had made dealing with the relationship between sculpture and quantum entanglement. OK, after I got there I remembered having done that for a class lecture, and could sort of recall why I thought it made sense. But had you asked me a priori if I had I created such a site, and where it was, my response would have been a more earthy version of “Surely you jest.”

“So,” you ask, “are you getting any better?”

“That all depends on what you mean by better,” I reply.

“I mean this need to retain everything, yet seemingly losing track of where particular pieces of ‘everything’ may be.” You clarify.

“Ah, yes. I have noticed that. And I haven’t even mentioned those writings that I wish to retain, but wish to keep totally private, but don’t know where to keep them. I mean if I could stumble across them, couldn't the CIA? The Proud Boys? So, no, not really better.” I admit.

“And what writings are those?” You ask.

“I’d really rather not go into that,” I reply.

You push a little further, “Can you give me an example of these things you write that you wish to retain, but are ambivalent about sharing?”

“Well, there is seemingly this post,” I mutter.

“What about it” you insist.

“I just sort of found it while looking for something else, and I don’t think I every posted it. There is nothing with this title on the Wall. But here it is on my screen.”

“How else could you find out if you posted it.”

“I suppose I could ask my sister. She keeps all of these posts.”

“That’s very interesting. But I see our time is up. Perhaps we can go into this further in our next session.”

“So do you want to keep our notes from today? Or should I?"

Schrag Wall: PPP Beyond Yellow

 As I read Dan's Elegy for Patti "Yellow," [ see https://schragwall.blogspot.com/2021/09/read-it-forward.html] I naturally fell to thinking about yellow as a color. And the image of a sunflower that I had taken back in Raleigh. And the notion that in a sunset all kinds of colors can mingle with yellow.  This is what resulted:

Read it Forward

Hi there -

As you have no doubt noticed, I read a lot. That said, I take a backseat to very few similarly addicted readers. First among whom is most likely my big sister. Yet, she also manages to watch every broadcast sports event that touches - no matter how tangentially - the life of any Northwestern athlete who attended NU during the 35 or so years when she was academic advisor to that cadre. And yet she reads and reads and reads. I am firmly, if somewhat eerily convinced, that if she ever sleeps she may do so in a coffin 🦇 But I digress.

The point is that any of us who read to excess will often come across a phrase or sentence, that makes you sit back and say “Whoa! That is really extraordinary! I wish I had written that!”  In that situation I will sometimes write the author and say something like: You know on page 217 where so and so remarks to that other character . . . . . " Well, whoa that is really extraordinary! I wish I had written that!” Sometimes they write back and we chat a bit. Sometimes they don’t. It is a neat experience. 

It is even more special when the praiseworthy piece has been penned by someone precious to you. I have mentioned my friend Dan several times here on the Wall. We were born 7 days apart - I'm older 🙂 - on two sides of the duplex our families shared while our fathers were young professors at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. I'm not sure how he came to be the better writer. Probably that Ph.D in English at Carolina. Anyhow, we were raised more as siblings than as friends and remain somewhat psychically joined at the hip. Sadly, Dan’s first wife died of pancreatic cancer a number of years ago. An elegy he rote for her - I suspect those many years in the making - was recently published by a Brit publication called Fortnightly Review.  The entire piece is one of those “Whoa! I wish I had written that!”  pieces, except for the fact that I am glad both my spouses are alive.

Anyhow, Fortnightly Review, like many online pubs will shuffle pieces to “back pages” depending on how many hits they generate. I would strongly suggest you click on over to it - if not for a chance at reading some awesome writing, then to keep the memory of this awesome woman front and center for a little while longer.

Here is the link:

Http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk./2021/07/Coyle-yellow/

Cheers

Strange Dreams

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It is probably because I am immersed in a reread of the Harry Potter books that I find myself thinking about the strange places to which dreams can take us. If you have read the series, perhaps many times, maybe alone or with your kids, you may recall the “pensieve.” This was a basin of sorts, usually stored in Dumbledore's closet, that could transport you into other times and places - into the memories of events. Sometimes your own, sometimes those stored in the minds of others. Anyhow, I have been drifting around in some hi-def dreams lately - amazing clarity. But unfortunately the increased resolution has done nothing to increase my ability to remember the damn things. Sometimes flashes do occur post dream: “Hey! That might have been so-and-so!” But not much certainty.

Still they have the feeling of being “real.” Sparkling. Intense. Perhaps those glittering little bits of alternate realities have greater appeal these days when the current “real world” seems awash in discord. So I find myself wandering around again considering the fascinating twists and turns of quantum mechanics. You see I do sincerely believe that the quantum mechanics notion of “many worlds” is on to something. Briefly, the quantum mechanics notion of many worlds asserts that every potential version of reality unfolds simultaneously in parallel universes. I know, I know - seems crazy, but not really any more bizarre than the end states proposed by any number of “traditional belief systems” that require an ever-expanding universe that can accommodate every soul who ever lived in a sort of “now we can all be friends,” existence, or an exclusive “only my people get in” gated-community approach to an afterlife. Neither of those worldviews get any screen time in my dreams or memories. But the idea of the quantum mechanics notion of many worlds seems an interesting way of approaching those dozing or dreaming altered states of consciousness in which I sometimes find myself.

It is interesting to consider all the billions and billions of worlds spiraling out in an infinite universe, yet I am really only interested in those that concern me. I mean what do I actually care about the billions of other versions of existence out there starring other players, right? But I am incredibly curious about all my “roads not taken” - those significant choices at moments in my life where I chose to do A, but could have just as easily done B, C, D, etc,.  So I wonder if my dreams, or the “editing” thereof that seems to intrude on my memories are some sort of psychic “wormholes” that let me peek down those roads not taken. What if I, as the survey I took in 5th grade said I should, became a forest ranger? Had married other than I did? How about that girl back in 1965 who also wanted to adopt “Jimmy” one of my “itsy-bittsy-skitsies” from the permanent treatment center in Northern California where we both worked? She was nice. Many worlds says I really did make all those choices and the various versions of my self is living those lives. And perhaps those other selves are peeking into mine through their dreams, as curious about the life I am living as I am about theirs.

So I wonder if there is any truth in that quantum possibility of viewing my other lives through my dreams? Is there any way to enhance or extend the experience? Anyway to remember the dreams? Anything to be learned from them? Anything that lets me slide down the many world’s wormholes that, however, avoids damaging or losing any of my remaining brain cells?

Enough. I must again to sleep. Perchance to dream.

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Playing with Pollock and Rothko

 I have always held that there are two rather huge divisions in the general field of art - at least from the artist’s point of view. There are those who create for themselves - driven by an inner need to create, to give form to personal urges and perceptions. Then there are those who create to meet the perceptions of what another - an audience - wants or needs. The first is a kind of “art as personal therapy” perspective, which can, as in the Bob Ross school, extend to others - but remains primarily “of the self,” a “not for profit” slice of the art world - again with Ross as an almost accidental exception. Even those who hang out their shingle as “art therapists” generate revenue not from the art created, but, hopefully, from the increased well-being of their clients.

The interesting division occurs when you try to distinguish between “inner need” artists, and artists who make a career from meeting the needs of clients. Obviously “commercial artists” live in the “for profit” world - creating the cute and cuddly or the sleek and sexy images designed to entice us to buy the physical products represented by the images they create. But, to stretch the notion a bit, what about Michaelanglo? Nobody is going to compare the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with the “toucan artwork” on a box of Fruit Loops. Nobody except perhaps Michaelanglo himself, who always self-identified as a sculptor, not a painter.  Painting the chapel ceiling was the “commercial arrangement” Michaelanglo reached with Pope Sixtus IV to buy his freedom to do the sculpture that addressed Michaelanglo’s inner needs as reflected in The David and The Pieta.

Which sort of brings me around to the works of Pollock and Rothko, two artists whose works I have a tendency to belittle. Mia culpa. I now realize that I have been making the same mistake that many scholars and art critics have made about the works of these two men. They are not commercial artists. They are inner driven. Rothko would eventually turn down lucrative commissions as being at odds with the pure intentions of his works. Pollock might well have gone unknown commercially except for the efforts of his wife, and fellow artist, Lee Krasner and the art world’s dominant king maker of the time, Peggy Guggenheim. Both women felt there was something worth saving in the works of this alcoholic “bad boy.”

What I have just now stumbled across is the realization that I have been looking at Pollock and Rothko as commercial artists, though more toward the Sistine chapel than the Fruit Loops end of the spectrum. But their commercial success in the art world seems to have occurred almost by accident, certainly in Pollock’s case by the efforts of Krasner and Guggenheim. And in Rothko’s by catching the eye of a cluster of avant garde critics. I think I will now better understand them as “inner driven” artists. And there is an inner driven reason for this shift in my own perception. The last image I shared with you - Sisters - was a real pain in the - well, choose the place you would least prefer to encounter pain. Point is, the product of the image took me deep into the foibles of digital technology and far from the far more appealing realm of “drawing.” It was personally, and creatively exhausting.

And with the clarity that that the rear view mirror often provides, that exhaustion may have contributed to the fierce head cold that wiped me out for a few days. I confronted said cold with my father’s preferred remedy: “When you feel poorly go to bed and sleep until you feel better.” I know, that perspective will never make it to JAMA, but the guy did live to be 100!  Anyhow, I am back, not 100 percent, but somewhere north of 85.

But “pre-cold,” I started a new “drawing,” one far afield from an image that had to look “right,” or even capture the feeling of a related, or “seed” photo, as in the PPP images.  I created the “healing drawing” by taking a large, 17 x 14, sheet of drawing paper and a couple of dark markers and letting the markers just wander over the paper until I had a nice, sort of balanced, scribble. Then I just let my other color markers decide what colors should go where. I got about 30% of the page close to what I considered “done” when the cold arrived and I went to bed.  I have now completed the “healing drawing” which accompanies this post. Yet, It was while playing - literally - with that drawing that I came to the foregoing thoughts on Pollock and Rothko.  They were not “fine artists” as we usually think of folks who works grace the halls of the “musey rooms.” They were seeking some sort of inner clarity with their work. And if we ask “How are you doing with that?” We get an alcoholic and a suicide. 

But we also find Bob Ross in this category of artists who sort of found fame by accident, and whose struggles with life led him to a conscious effort to, professionally, share the joy of painting with anyone interested to listen in and watch, and personally to never raise his voice to others.  A much better outcome. And one that encourages us to pursue our own drawings for the joy of it, and when any part of it leads anywhere else, we need to step back and hit the restart button.

So here my restart button - again my apologies for the poor image quality, but to fight for better quality here in blogger drags me away from drawing and back to digital image processing which is not my objective here. Remember the original is 17x14 😁

Schrag Wall: PPP Sisters

 Another multi-step image creation post that is being hampered by having three devices and at least two types of image files trying to talk to each other - or not 😱. Kind of ugly, but if I can get the images cleaned up I will resend.

Anyhow the image with this one, which their Mom sent:

Which I then converted to this and made a few further adaptations that filled the background

To finally arrive at this version: 

Shooting From The Hip

Well, actually from the upper arm 🤪! I have just had my third COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine. Yup the big 3, so I am feeling pretty invincible. My oncologist suggested I do so since my history of two slow dances with multiple myeloma and a couple of attendant stem cell transplants finally left me cancer free. But I  am taking Revlimid prophylactically, which tossed me into the immunocompromised group.  So I asked my oncologist his advice regarding getting the third shot and attending my college class 50th reunion in mid-October. His response? “Go for it!”

But my getting shot #3 is not really about me or my reunion plans.  It is about the 7 come 11 “too young to vaccinate” kiddos-grandchildren etc., with whom I come in contact. Not to mention the anti-vaccination individuals who inhabit adult bodies but who seemingly - as one of my favorite professors/ministers asked a classmate who had asserted that only his immediate family would be allowed into heaven - “Son did you check your brains at the door?”

I haven’t written about the tenet Oppose Harm yet, but this is one of those times. When people choose to check their brains at the door and refuse to get vaccinated I feel compelled to oppose the harm that their behavior does to everyone around them - despite the fact that I am personally vaccinated to the gills and hence unaffected by their foolishness. So this post is my bit to “oppose harm.”  I don’t want to debate other’s freedom to not get vaccinated for whatever strange reasons they have created for themselves e.g. “I don’t need no stinking mask/vaccine.” It is certainly their right to put themselves at risk. It is not, however, their right to put the rest of us out there on their fringes of foolishness. So either get vaccinated or have the courage of your convictions and stay away from the people you can infect. 😱

Foster Harmony

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Before I begin these next few posts I need to acknowledge that, yes, I do write about “the four tenets” an awful lot. But that is because I spent a lot of time thinking about, and reading about, various approaches to a “theory of everything.”  Einstein’s theory of general relativity and unified field theory, string theory, “brane” theory, etc. Fascinating stuff. And I continue to follow, from the perspective of an interested amateur, each new “ah ha!” moment from the Large Hadron Collider, CERN, Hubble, neutrino collectors, etc.  Very, very, fun stuff. But it wasn’t too many years ago that I realized, somewhat reluctantly, that the jaw dropping reveals from physics and astrophysics were all focused on describing the physical nature of the universe - “what is.” The problem was, and remains, that while learning “what is” remains a fundamental question for humanity, it is not the one that most intrigues me. My question is related, but more existential in nature: “What does it mean?” So my own questioning shifted somewhat. Not to exclude “what is,” but to include, and foreground, “what does it mean.” Distilled Harmony is the result of that new - for me anyhow - train of thought. The four tenets weave together to create the more encompassing worldview that I call Distilled Harmony. It is that dynamic interaction among the tenets that continually draws me back to further consideration of each tenet and its role in the construction of the existential whole. That said, let’s turn our attention to Foster Harmony.

Foster Harmony is the dominant tenet in the Distilled Harmony worldview. The importance of Harmony is perhaps best demonstrated by considering the lack of same that we have been experiencing over the last few years - by reflecting on what Harmony is not.

Harmony is not about winning. I am reminded of a common scene in "action-adventure" dramas. It occurs when the protagonist and the antagonist have battled to a standstill. They separate, and one says to the other, "This isn't over!" and vanishes upstage right.

No. For the good of us all "this," whatever it is, has to be over. 

The declaration that "this isn't over" says we are still enemies and you and I will return to continue our conflict. Discord will seek to overthrow Harmony. And often the discord arises in the name of some past wrong, which was, perhaps, at some time, a legitimate grievance.  But here is the uncomfortable, endlessly repeating, lesson of history - at some time in history we each - no matter what our heritage - were both an oppressor and a victim, both the slaver and the slave. So any claims to "victimage" and related recompense all depend upon which particular slice of history you wish to focus on.  According to the stories I have been told, [my 23andMe data are due back in a couple weeks] my own family history traces back at least as far as Russia under the reign of Catherine the Great, empress regant of "All Russia" from 1762 until 1796 – the country's longest-ruling female leader, and also an advocate of the Enlightenment. She allowed Mennonites [my people] to settle within her borders. However, once she died, less "enlightened" members of the nobility drove my people out to Switzerland, and later here to the US.  So, in the name of "This isn't over!" do I demand restitution from "All Russia"?  To which Putin would logically assert "That wasn't us! That was czarist Russia hundreds of years ago! Don't try to blame me!" 

So take your family and track them back as far as you can - but certainly for those of us currently here in the USA, - way past your lives here in "the New World" as arrivals from "the old World.” No, ideally back to prehistoric Europe and Africa. We apparently retain Neanderthal genes. So did some slighted Neanderthal dude hurl “This isn’t over!” to the Homo sapien family gathered around the fire in the best cave? For indigenous peoples the challenge would be to track as close as you can get to arrivals from the Bering straits some 10 to 15 thousand years ago, or, as more recent research tempts us, contact along more southerly sea routes, also 10 to 12 thousand years ago?  Now find a point or two along your history when you were the victim - we all had those points - and define your oppressor. Now, do you want to pick a fight with them for grievances millennia ago? Because "This isn't over!"? Then pick a couple of points when your people were the oppressors. Those too will be there. What, if anything, do you owe to the victims of your ancestor's actions thousands of years ago? Your call.

But as we consider what our most harmonious choices could have been as either victim or oppressor millennia ago, we need to remember another dominant aspect necessary for fostering harmony - regardless of the era - forgiveness.  You, personally, in your present existence, may have made the decision to seek new beginnings along a harmonious path of life. Kudos! That is wonderful. But it is no guarantee that others in your life have made the same decision. Their behavior may still reflect the same hyper-competitive Lombardi-esque "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing!” or the Trumpian "My way or the highway" mentalities. Those are both still incredibly common attitudes in America and around the globe. If we truly wish to foster harmony we need to be able to forgive excesses. Forgive, yes, but neither excuse nor enable. And I'll get to those options in the upcoming post on Oppose Harm.

So what is Harmony?  To save you the trouble of clicking back to a quote from a couple of posts ago on Musical Miracles let me restate:

"If a tiny vibrating string is the fundamental unit, is the essential building block for everything in the universe, there are profound implications for the landscape of the human heart and mind and soul.  If string theory is right, then it isn't just tiny particles or huge interstellar regions that are made of strings - it is everything. It is also you and I. We are composites of unimaginable billions of tiny vibrating strings. Vibrating strings make musical notes, groups of notes make chords, groups of chords make songs and melodies. We are made of music, we are literally walking, talking, thinking, sleeping and crying symphonies. (Moi, The God Chord, p. 10).

We have harmony within us, we are harmony, it is the natural state of our existence.

So, in conclusion, the tenet Foster Harmony directs us to banish the flames of blame, to declare this is over and we can begin again to behave in our own life, in the present for which we are responsible, to truly seek the harmonious path. To Foster Harmony it is often necessary to use phrases like: “I agree. I didn’t know that. I see your point. Why don't you go ahead?” Similarly we need to fight the inclination to demonize those who have recently wronged us. There are harmonic paths to the righting obvious wrongs, and as I said above, I will touch on those down the road a bit on the post regarding tenet number four: Oppose Harm. For the moment however, the point is that Fostering Harmony is most often manifested as an act of compromise between and among sincere, forgiving , advocates; it is not a victory dance following some form of confrontation and forced capitulation.

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Distilled Harmony Reprise

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Any brief examination of the teachings of the world’s religions and philosophies reveals an inclination to define how one should lead a “good life” or follow a pathway to an afterlife that is the reward for having lived that “good life.” I have never been comfortable with that notion. Seems more like child rearing than finding your place in the universe. So I lean more towards discerning beliefs and behaviors that allow for, or describe, a comforting and comfortable universe - sort of the existential equivalent of lying in a hammock, well-fed and well-loved, with a good book and a tall glass of lemonade, or dozing before a warm fire on a cold winter night.

I realize that seems terribly simplistic, but does life really need to be as complex, demanding, and complicated as the various sages, philosophers and prophets would have us believe? I am inclined to think not. So, I have worked my way around to the four tenets of Distilled Harmony, about which I have written to you on many occasions. However, Distilled Harmony is a kind of moving target. Life, and the world, doesn’t stand still. Knowledge, and our behavior in light of that knowledge, continues to evolve, and so I continually reflect on how the four tenets; Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm, evolve, function and interrelate in that changing world. So I am going to take a few posts to review the four tenets of Distilled Harmony and how they stand here at the midpoint of 2021.

The world is certainly a different place than it was a dozen years ago when I put up a post on Schrag Wall at the end of August, 2009 when Barack Obama became the first black President. Then Joe Biden was Vice President, I actually went into a classroom to teach, and American involvement in the war in Afghanistan was finishing its first decade. This year I am in my first full year of retirement, so no need to go to any classroom, physical or online, Biden is president and has ended our involvement in Afghanistan, Kamala Harris brings a number of firsts to the office of Vice President, first female and first of blended African-American and Asian-American heritage. From a "big picture perspective" that would seem to reflect a somewhat smooth evolution - but when you factor in the Trump years, with their penchant for arrogance, violence and confrontation and the incredible discord in the nation as a whole, it was anything but. 

So far this year, it has been a sort of “chutes and ladders” time, a sort of one step forward, two steps sideways, one step back kind of world with the pandemic, the election, the Olympics, etc,. However, if a worldview like Distilled Harmony is worth its salt it should be able to take those little bobbles in stride! We shall see. “Watch this space.” I'll start with the first and dominant tenet, Foster Harmony.

See you soon.

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Schrag Wall PPP: Flower Faces and Backstory

So I was headed back down to the Carolinas to see Daughters, Granddaughters, and their spouses. It was going to be a couple of weeks so naturally I packed up all my markers, glasses, compression gloves, etc. to work on a drawing of Andrea and Sam's girls, Maya and Ellie. Which, of course, was the only thing I forgot to pack.  Well, talk about all dressed up with no place to go! However I had brought another PPP project that I was going to work on when I finished Maya and Ellie.  It was this flower pic of a Paul Minnis painting that hangs in our front hall :

So I messed around and created this template:

Which eventually led to this drawing: Flower Faces

I think I am making my blogging software crazy with this post. Images may be too big, etc. If the post bounces back I will try to find a way to shrink them.

Musical Miracles

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 I think I have mentioned here before that my older brother, Jim, died of a glioblastoma in 1984, when I was 37 years old. He was 41. Yeah, too young anyway you look at it. But I don’t want to dwell on the injustice of brain cancer, no point, no explanation. Instead I want to reflect on the miracles that music can work even in the dark hallways of a ravaged brain.  We were a musical family, probably as the result of my mother’s ability to play the piano, a bit by sight and certainly when helped along with the plethora of song books stashed in overflowing piano bench. Singalongs by the piano were an important part of growing up in our family. My Dad took a “summer teaching swap” with a colleague out on the west coast back in 1954 and 1956.  So we piled into our ‘54 Chevy Bel Aire and camped and sang our way from central Ohio to Southern California - three kids, two adults, round trips of several thousand miles, roadside table breakfasts and lunches - twice! It was great!

We all kept music in our lives while growing up. Choir, glee club, high school and college musicals. Brother Jim’s unique contribution was his ability to coax pretty much any tune you wanted out of his mysterious collection of harmonicas, shiny silver things with little plungers on the side that let you shift keys. He was a magician on those mouth organs.

One of the more insidious affects of glioblastoma is that it steals your speech, your ability to talk, to converse, to present your point of view. Talking was another cherished activity in our family. When I went to spend some time with Jim, and his jewel of a wife Linda, during what turned out to be the tail end of his illness, and his life, I was undone by his aphasia - until he and I discovered that he still could sing. And we sang it all. Show tunes, folk songs, little snatches of opera. But it soon became clear that we really hit our stride with early rock and roll - 1950s and 60’s. Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, Elvis, Nat King Cole, some Ray Charles, a sprinkling of Patsy Cline and just a touch of Hank Williams. Jim never missed a note or a lyric. But then when silence descended it was cruel and seemingly complete.

It wasn’t Don McLean’s dire “the day the music died.” I knew then that, as it is daily demonstrated in my somewhat obsessive attention to music,  the music never really dies. Rather it reaffirms the central role that music plays in the experiencing and expression of our lives. As Jim and I sang our way through our personal version of The Great American Songbook, faces and places flashed through my still healthy mind and, I fervently hoped, through his cruelly disordered one.  In the 37 years since Jim died, nothing has occurred to disabuse me of my firm belief of the centrality of music in life. When I settle in for the concert I construct each night to sing me to my dreams, I will sometimes select a specific genre, artist or era, the music of which I know will call up those faces, places, emotions and memories that I wish to accompany me down into gentle sleep.  It does not always work, but when it does it proves worth the effort.

Still, I often wonder where the music lives? And then I remember, I have answered this question before.  In my book The God Chord: Physics Meets the Landscape of the Heart, I assert the following:

I, however, am becoming increasingly convinced that string theory does lend significant predictive and explanatory insight into those seemingly "non-physics" concerns. If a tiny vibrating string is the fundamental unit, is the essential building block for everything in the universe, there are profound implications for the landscape of the human heart and mind and soul.  If string theory is right, then it isn't just tiny particles or huge interstellar regions that are made of strings - it is everything. It is you and I. We are composites of unimaginable billions of tiny vibrating strings. Vibrating strings make musical notes, groups of notes make chords, groups of chords make songs and melodies. We are made of music, we are literally walking, talking, thinking, sleeping and crying symphonies. (Moi, The God Chord, p. 10).

I need to pay closer attention to myself.  That is where the music goes - everywhere.  It may well be that certain functions are more comfortable in various spaces in our body - folks love to point to spots in the brain and say "This is where language skills reside. And over here is locomotion, strength, and our ability to sense our body location in space.  And then here we have . . . " But then we see people who have been in accidents or encountered disease that have laid waste to that part of the brain but, 'lo and behold, those various supposedly isolated functions find some overt flowering - somewhere, somehow.

Maybe it was singing with Jim that, in part, taught me that music was everywhere, 'tho I never got around to understanding it, and writing about it, until a quarter of a century later. The music remained there, inside him, and together we could still liberate it - if only for a little while. So, to paraphrase Jurassic Park, “Music finds a way.”

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Wandering and Wondering

 Wandering Around the Carolinas

Sorry to have been away for so long. I have been wandering around the Carolinas visiting family and memories. The family part has been delightful, seeing daughters, spouses and granddaughters in both Carolinas. The trip down to Greenville, SC prompts a bit of “travelers advice.” Greenville lies west and south of Raleigh. The logical route is to take I-40 to I-85, then down into Greenville. This is one of those times when logic, and your gps will risk both your life and your sanity. Mine took me west out of Raleigh via NC 64. Hmm, thought I, not what I might have chosen, but much more scenic and relatively traffic free, so I cruised along until another state route dumped be out onto I-85 headed in the right direction, well perhaps “proper direction” is a better description. I-85 is an unending stretch of concrete under construction which had apparently claimed several lives that week. Somewhat hard to understand as I don’t think I exceeded 20 mph during the entire stretch. Total travel time from Raleigh to Greenville about 5.5 hours. Upon my arrival my daughter informed me that a friend had taken even a “shorter as the crow flies route” and clocked in excess of 7 hours! Return Solution: Go North young traveler! From Greenville, SC head north to Asheville, NC and pick up I-40 straight into Raleigh. A word of caution however, from Asheville I-40 tilts straight downhill to the ocean. I often needed to concentrate on keeping my decades old 4-cylinder Yaris under 80. Between road tripping the visits with both “grand families” were wonderful. I will not go into detail least I go into stereotypical raves about how wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, and much like me are my grand babies. Their parents are also doing well. :-). But I do want to briefly explore another facet of my wandering.

My work life differed from many in that I spent 40 years teaching on the same campus, in a series of offices and classrooms no more than a half mile apart. Hence many of the milestones of my adult life took place in a geographical milieu more akin to a small town than the large state university of 30,000 students that surrounded my little world. This morning, after visiting a exquisite field of sunflowers that has been planted across from the state penitentiary - I’m not even going to go there - I ignored my gps that was set on “take me home,” and wandered back through the campus that had been my home, workplace and occasional refuge for 4 decades.

I suppose I should not have been surprised that the experience was such an emotional roller coaster. One turn would confront me with a gleaming new structure that had no business being there, another would send me to hidden vistas that forced me to pull over, catch my breath, and blink away some suspicious mistiness before moving on with a rueful smile. Again, an unsurprising reaction as I had encountered some of my most precious friends and, perhaps not strangely, disappointing acquaintances in that small town within a huge university. Logically unsurprising, but still somehow unexpected. Well, so much for wandering. Now let me head over the wondering that had followed me down from Burr Ridge.

Tapping the Matriarchal Memory

I am rather addicted to nature documentaries. To my mind David Attenborough has the best job in the world! So it should come as no surprise that this post originally began as a musing about the shared characteristics of this seemingly disparate cluster of mammals and insects: Elephants, Sperm whales, Bonobos chimps, Lemurs, Meerkats, Lions, Mole rats, Spotted  Hyenas, Orcas, termites, Honey Bees and The Temple Monkeys of Katmandu. The reflection would have been more challenging had the media not, when the post began, been paying so much attention to the herd of elephants wandering around China. A paradoxical aside grows out of that particular story as we see cadres of local Chinese actively guiding the herd, tolerating crop destruction and closing roads to avoid endangering the endearing pachyderms. Yet at the same time China provides the largest market for carvings crafted from poached elephant ivory and powdered elephant ivory for applications in traditional medicine. Twin grey-market demands that threatens the global existence of the species. Still history has never argued for human consistency. 

Nevertheless, media coverage of the wandering Chinese elephants has provided a pretty big hint as to what unifies this seemingly disparate brotherhood of life forms.  And that is a bit of a backhanded hint in its own right: The answer? Brotherhood is no big deal because all of these creatures live in groups that are largely or totally matriarchal.  Any Y chromosomes that show up take their place on the back benches when it comes to decision making, and are largely tolerated because they are necessary to make more females.

Since the Chinese elephants are getting all the press these days let's consider them first. All indications are that the elephants leading this 15 critter contingent are all mature females, which pretty well mimics what we know about wild elephants. The oldest matriarch leads the herd because she has the "herd memory" apparently passed down to her from the previous herd matriarch.  She can remember the routes to water and the foliage necessary to fulfill the normal elephant daily requirements of between 250 and 300 pounds of green stuff and 20 to 50 gallons of water. Talk about the notion that a woman’s work is never done! In the meantime, the guys mostly hang out on their own, unless they are occasionally needed to knock down trees during droughts so the rest of the herd can reach the leaves. 

Ah, but then there is the old "a guy's gotta do what a guy 'musth' do." "Musth" among elephants seems to be a lot like a really bad frat party. It is a "normal" condition in adult male elephants in which they are suddenly flooded with 10 times their normal level of testosterone, causing the dudes break up the furniture and aggressively pursue anything in the elephant equivalent of a skirt. Perhaps a rock band “after party” becomes a better analogy. But it is probably unfair to unilaterally paint the elephants as “beastie boys.” We could probably find a bunch of similar examples of “boys behaving badly” if we were to research what happens when males hopped up on testosterone encounter the rest of the matriarchal herd, pod, hive, pride, or what have you. And that was where this post was kind of headed, until I got side-tracked by, for me, a more interesting question: do matriarchal and patriarchal societies manifest the two dominant tenets of Distilled Harmony - Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty - differently? And if so, how so? And does it matter?

I know. A rather sudden shift of gears there. It sort of snuck up on me too, but I think it is interesting to think about. Before matriculating to Kalamazoo College as a freshman (We were all freshmen back then. 50th reunion coming up in October Hornets!) we received a book list of books we had to read before coming to campus. (Like, books on paper with pages and everything - totally rad. )  Anyhow, one of the books was If the South Had Won the Civil War by MacKinley Kantor. An interesting “alternative history” novel. For some reason, bumping around in the weird pathways of my mind, I began to think about alternative histories that might have evolved had the societies that influenced Harmony and Beauty and, of course Art, been matriarchal, rather than the patriarchal societies and traditions that filled those cultural niches.

Now, let me acknowledge right up front that I realize that gender studies is an incredibly hot topic these days, and I am straying far afield from my own academic training. I mean, I only learned the word “cisgender” today, and I am still not sure exactly what it means. So please read the following as the musings of a interested layperson (Can I still say layperson?) and forgive any distortion of current academic debate. It is unintentional.

It would be foolish to contest the notion that in the west we owe much of our iconic art to religious patriarchies. Kings, Pharaohs, Emperors, Pontiffs, Khans and other male nobility around the globe and throughout history decreed that  portraits, sculptures, poetry and palaces be created to glorify either themselves or their gods - which, not surprisingly - were often one and the same. And, also not surprisingly, these art works often portrayed the ruler in the role of a military hero - smiting the appropriate villain of the age and thrashing the villain’s celestial supporters.  Let me make it clear, I am not advocating that we try to designate “appropriate” art and “inappropriate or bad art.” That was/is, we need to remember, something that Hitler and the Taliban have in common. Hitler wanted to create Der Fuhrermuseum, which would house all the world’s “good art” while neglecting or destroying the art which the Nazis decided were, I guess, “not good.” The Taliban just blows up the things they do not like. Sounds like something that would be easy to avoid, right? Actually, it’s not simple at all, it is very very complicated. Down in Carolina version of my neck of the woods, folks are a bit rabid about removing all the remnants of the confederacy - statues, names of buildings, streets, etc., and replacing them with art and designation more in line with our more enlightened times. I’m not really comfortable with that kind of artistic scourged earth policy. I have some trouble working my way around a couple of concerns. First, it smacks of a head in the sand approach to history. Personally, I’m glad the South didn’t win the Civil War. But if we are to allow our nation to evolve beyond the racist beliefs that were so entwined in that conflict, we cannot simply pretend that the Civil War - the war that killed more Americans than any conflict before or since - never happened. And hence advocate a “cleansing” such that the complexity of that conflict had failed to be reflected in significant works of art.

Second I have trouble with the fact that the quality of the work, the simple chisel to stone, brush to canvas, ink to parchment,issues are rarely if ever raised. I do not share the worldview of the Roman who build the Coliseum, the Greeks who built the Parthenon, Pope Alexander III who lay the cornerstone for Notre Dame. So if somehow I became ruler of the world, should I just knock ‘em down? Off with their heads!? I hope not.

But my major thought in this post is not what the art of the past tells us about what was, rather I wonder what all was left out, and what we stand to gain if we correct that artistic editing. I am talking about the voice of the matriarchy. I don’t mean to ignore the significant works of female artists whose works are making their way into the canon. Women like Elisebeth Vigee Le Brun, Camille Claudel, Mary Cassatt, and the more modern works of Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe. But, truth be told, much of the energy that these women could have put into creating art was siphoned off to avoid or leap over the barriers created by the art establishment. I wonder what art would could have seen had ALL their energy gone into their art?

OK. Back to the nature documentaries. There appears to be a fairly common difference between matriarchal and patriarchal nonhuman societies. Matriarchal societies seem to focus on caring for the group. Often the “aunts” or older sister will assist the biological mother in childcare, even if that means sacrificing their own opportunities to reproduce. To chose perhaps the worst possible example, lions invade this matriarchal model by occasionally killing cubs to bring the females back into heat, thus allowing the male to father his own cubs. To over simplify, matriarchal societies seem to favor supportive, open, group oriented behavior. Patriarchal societies favor competitive, dominant, individually dominant behavior. To make a fairly large leap from there to human behavior in the arts, I end up with this supposition:

It is obvious, even if only from the few example cited above, that artistic ability is not gender specific. As any currently practicing artist can tell you the greatest challenge is not doing the art, it is getting the art to an audience - or to a market if you will. The social and behavioral norms of matriarchal societies are more conducive to bringing art to the public than the exclusive, power centered norms of the patriarchal norms of the traditional art market.

So what? I’m not really sure. I am afraid that the pendulum of “public taste” in the art will have to swing back past “center balance” before the truly matriarchal “what brings the most and the best art to the public” will find its place. Most of the art market and gallery websites that come across my screen either feature, or solicit, “work from young artists from previously unrepresented groups.” As an old white guy, this is not a particularly welcoming environment. So the best option seems to be to wait on the pendulum - something that gets a little more difficult every year for us “Artists of a Certain Age.”

Big Honey Suckle Rose

 Here it is!

Schrag Wall PPP Catch Up

 Hi all - 

I have been neglecting the photos/drawing portion of the Wall so here, hopefully are some catch-up pieces.

First, Honey Suckle Rose. This series got started from this photo up in Vito's favorite ball chasing spot:

I cut a strip out from there and whited out the parts I didn't want:

And drew in the designs I wanted:

And added color:

The color and resolution on these are terrible, so I will send a single copy in a separate email.

 

Dancing With Complexity

The third tenet of Distilled Harmony is Distill Complexity. I tend not to write about it as often as Foster Harmony on Enable Beauty, because, well, because it is complicated. Then something happens out there in the “real world” that forces you to consider complexity more closely. This time we get to blame Google - with a little help with their buddies at Harvard - for something other than losing an order. Seems that they have managed to capture the most accurate 3D image of the brain to date. To be specific, according to Singularity Hub.com, they:

“published an intricate map of every cell and connection in a cubic millimeter of the human brain. . . to make the map, the teams sliced donated tissue into 5,300 sections, each 30 nanometers thick, and imaged them with a scanning electron microscope at a resolution of 4 nanometers. The resulting 225 million images were computationally aligned and stitched into a 3D digital representation of the region.”

Wow, that is waaay more pictures than I have on my computer, maybe even more pictures of my grand-daughters that my daughters have posted on Facebook. A simple Google search will take you to all the information about this accomplishment necessary to either warm the cockles of your techie heart, or put you to sleep.  I come down somewhere in between: Speechless at the complexity that we carry around between our ears. But while the grace and beauty of the science is truly awesome, for me it pales almost to insignificance in comparison to what those physical structures, revealed by the science, allow us to participate in. Everything we create, experience, believe, feel, realize, everything we are, springs to life only as electrical and chemical impulses flash across those billions and billions of pathways at incompressible speeds. If that isn’t complexity, it will have to do until something better comes along.

So I imagine myself able to sort of amble around in my brain, wandering among those billions and billions of connections (perhaps aka b&bcs? ) of my lives lived, experienced, or perhaps passed by, but still somehow stashed as the “what might have, could have, should have beens up there in the ‘billions and billions of connections’ of brain land.” They stretch out before me, images, poems, writings, people, places waiting for my presence to animate them. Or, if we let the quantum theory notion of "many worlds" sneak in, what happens/happened to those entities/realities I chose not to pursue? Or those for which I have insufficient time?

Whew. I’m not sure when you first begin to question your own immortality. It is an awkward consideration, since, in truth, we have always experienced ourselves as immortal beings. I wake up and there I am. Never been anywhere else - unless you want to count a few confused moments in the 60s. I am fascinated by the literature on near-death experiences, but never having had one - just a couple of minsdiagnosises a couple of decades ago - near death experiences remain just literature to me.

More common and more comfortable, we often tend to create labels for those moments that our lives have in common with those experienced with or by others; angst, love, etc. For example - the notion of a midlife crisis springs to mind.  Nice, pat, and probably inaccurate and insufficient. It seems more likely that the time-honored “midlife crisis” occurs when a newly encountered awareness of one’s mortality (something we tend to ignore) intersects with the time necessary to actually consider the slipping of sand through the hour glass. And “so are  the Days of Our Lives.” Just kidding, but it is interesting that the time-worn hokey opening of one of television’s longest running daytime soap operas points to a very complex set of issues that most of us will experience, have experienced, or are experiencing.

It is not that we never actually consider the awesome complexity of our lives and the staggering array of possibilities embedded in that complexity. We do. Two iterations come to mind:  one time is a fairly accurate “everything is possible” moment, the other is a transient illusion. Strangely we often get them backwards.  First the illusion, for which we can usually blame our parents, but unfortunately in doing so, those of us who have children, must usually fess up to handing off the same illusion to our progeny. It’s the old “You can be anything you want to be fallacy!”  In pursuit of the Distill Complexity tenet, I’d suggest the acronym YCBAYWTB to sort of simplify.

The problem is this, the YCBAYWTB fallacy neglects the hard reality of prerequisites, something with which my half century in various roles in various classrooms has made me very familiar.  So let me use the academic iteration for a quick and dirty example. Say in response to the YCBAYWTB the “7th grade you” decides you want to be the next Elon Musk.  OK. If we just want to do the money side the three richest folks in the world are - in a shifting kind of order, Elon Musk (Tesla motors, Space X, PayPal, Solar City,  Neuralink, etc.) Jeff Bezos, (who may be slipping given the divorce-  Amazon, Blue Origin, Whole Foods, etc.  ) and Bernard Arnault (No, I didn’t recognize him either.  Google says he is the chairman and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE, the world's largest luxury goods company.) They are each worth about 200  billion. OK, none of those guys just started printing money. They had to deal with the prerequisites. They had to somehow get their first job in order to buy their first company to make their first million, or billion or whatever, and in order to do that they probably had to pass algebra, or calculus, or French, or Latin, or etc., etc., etc.  Do you see where I am going here? The grand assertion that YCBAYWTB tends to leave out considerations of the prerequisites, all those things you have to do BEFORE YCBAYWTB! So, before we tell our children, or our students YCBAYWTB, in good conscience, we need to tell them about the prerequisites necessary to reach that goal.

And then there is the whole "luck" thing. I used to give a class assignment specifically designed to combat the YCBAYWTB fallacy prevalent among my students, as evidenced by the fact that they had a tendency to change majors every other semester.  In the assignment, they had to define exactly what it was that they wanted to be - and then list the prerequisites that they needed to complete to reach that goal. But I specifically forbade "stardom" either in athletics or the arts as their chosen goal. Strange for the guy who seriously considered "God's gift to the musical theater" as a legitimate life goal? Not really. I had come to realize that the pastry of stardom was heavily leavened with the yeast of good fortune.  So the next star in any of those performance fields had to use their "fall back option" for this exercise. MVP of the Super Bowl your first choice? Then use a legitimate route to coaching for this exercise. Though, in retrospect, I guess I should have made an exception for Russell Wilson. But how often does that happen? The point is that when advocating for the YCBAYWTB fallacy, it is only fair that one point out the prerequisites that pave the path to that "anything," the hurdles that turn the fallacy into a reality.

So what about the time when YCBAYWTB isn’t an illusion? It is still a bit of an illusion, but at least it is an informed illusion, and it lies at the other end of one’s professional life -  retirement.  Now let me admit right up front that I  know that I have lived, to date anyhow, a pretty charmed life. Born as a white male in a middle class family that believed, and provided for, an education that was not seen as complete until one had a doctorate degree. And also having reached the plateau of 3 score and 12 years with only a few health hiccups, accompanied along the way by folks who cared about me perhaps more than I deserved. Yeah, it has been a pretty nice ride so far, a fortuitous clambering past the prerequisites necessary to reach this iteration of YCBAYWTB.

Don't get me wrong, I realize that there are some things I might want to be that are no longer on the table. Broadway has yet to come calling. But I really don't see that as a bad thing, as that would be a "job." And no "job" really fits in my current YCBAYWTB perspective.  As a matter of fact, anything that requires me to march to the beat of someone else's drum is not going to make the cut. Even though the life of a tenured college professor was a pretty "self-controlled" ride, I can't imagine having to be somewhere I didn't want to be - AKA, meetings, classes, etc. Same can be said of playing point guard in the NBA. I never could go to my left, and the highlight reels rarely feature exhausting hours in the weight room, and let’s not even think about the whispered commentary accompanying the gruesome injuries. So what does fit in my personal view of YCBAYWTB as seen from this side of retirement?

Fortunately, the parameters are pretty "me friendly," and not surprisingly, in close step with the tenets of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. And that really is the key to turning this "senior YCBAYWTB" from an illusion into a reality: Determine what you have come to believe and engage in behaviors that manifest those beliefs.

So let’s start with Foster Harmony. Yeah, yeah, it should be pretty simple - just chill, be mellow. However, this one is often a challenge for me and hence I draw a great deal of pleasure and comfort from those times when I actually pull it off. You see the challenge of behaving in a way that Fosters Harmony comes from the fact that in much of the world, and certainly in America, we are taught the oppose. We live in an incredibly competitive world. To quote that famous gentle soul Vince Lombardi - “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing!” - a phrase he apparently stole from UCLA football coach Red Sanders.

The point is we are taught that winning is what is important in life - beating the others, being the best, thrusting your fist into the air! Me, me, me! But no, no, no. To truly Foster Harmony you have realize that winning just isn’t that important. Mind you, I am not advocating losing here. Rather you just need to shift the objective. Winning isn’t the goal. Rather, doing whatever you choose to do to the best of your ability - that is the goal. And you reach that goal best by listening, not talking. And when you feel compelled to talk, practice phrases like: “That’s a neat idea!” “What would you like to do?” “I hadn’t thought of that” and "I think you're right!" And even more important, try not to get the last word, even if you are tempted to mutter it as you leave the room.  I know - I think of it as "tough harmony."

Sounds kind of wimpish. But one thing I learned in half a century of teaching is that truth and certainty have a way of swiftly changing in the face of more evidence, better research, greater wisdom. So crow, and my own words spoken in haste, are two things I am working on keeping off my dinner plate as I work my way to fostering Harmony.

Enabling Beauty is the tenet that is by far the most fun, because it is the one that implores us to facilitate making the world a more beautiful place. Basically it breaks into two closely related sets of endeavors: doing and supporting. “Doing” is just that. Mess around in any medium, draw, paint, sing, compose, dance, write. But keep two things in mind. First remember that in a Distilled Harmony view of the world, the objective is to create beauty. As I have said and written often before; I don't do horror, I don't do dark. Sorry Guernica, you get no space on my wall. In 1937 maybe it was the primarily role of the artist to draw attention to the horrors of the wars that would soon engulf the world. Today with the mandate of “if it bleeds, it leads,” media. We need merely to glance at the nearest screen, or art exhibit. Ugliness? The advocates of certainty from both left and right seem to have that that covered. Time to take a stand for Beauty.

The supporting part is also great fun. Go to local concerts, community theater. Go to art shows. Buy something, even if your walls are full. Gift it forward.

Also, don’t compare your own work to genius. Just take your best shot at creating Beauty. Lombardi and Sanders were both wrong. The reality is that winning is sometimes a minor by-product of doing your best at what is truly meaningful and important. And while watching sports is enjoyable - guilty here - and incredibly profitable to a small handful of folks, it isn’t really meaningful or important. So perhaps better to increase our focus elsewhere. Maybe by focusing on simply enabling beauty, you may surprised how and when that illusive thing we call genius might emerge. 

Perhaps the illusive third tenet - Distill Complexity - may simply be manifested by clarifying your own beliefs and attitudes and then exploring how you can bring those beliefs and attitudes into the more dominant two initial tenets: Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty.

So for my particular senior "YCBAYWTB,"  I read, draw, write and listen to music - all the time. To be truly content, and, yes, happy, I have to have a Wall post or two, or three, percolating here on my screen, a drawing evolving between my photos, graphics app, and my drawing tablet, and a book - often a mystery - following me on iPad and iPhone, all to the tune of whatever I choose to be listening to a the moment. And, equally important, when any of those three activities seem to generate something worth sharing - I do so. Like now.

Hmm, Maybe not really all that complex after all.