The Turner Prize is justly celebrated for raising all sorts of questions in the public ind about art and its place in our lives. Unfortunately, however, the intellectual climate surrounding the fine arts is so vaporous and self-satisfied that few of these questions are ever actually addressed, let alone answered.
Why is it that all of us here--presumably members of the arts community--probably know more about the currents of thought in contemporary science than those in contemporary art? Why have the sciences yielded great explainers like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Gould, while the arts routinely produce some of the loosest thinking and worst writing known to history? Why has the art world been unable to articulate any kind of useful paradigm for what it is doing now?
I'm not saying that artists should have to "explain" their work, or that writers exist to explain it for them, but that there could and should be a comprehensible public discussion about what art does for us, what is being learned from it, what it might enable us to do or think or feel that we couldn't before.
Most of the public criticism of the arts is really an attempt to ask exactly such questions, and, instead of just priding ourselves on creating controversy by raising them, trying to answer a few might not be such a bad idea. The sciences rose to this challenge, and the book sales those authors enjoy indicate a surprising public appetite for complex issues, the result of which has been a broadening social dialogue about the power and beauty and limits of science. There's been almost no equivalent in the arts. The making of new culture is, given our performance in the fine and popular arts, just about our only growth industry aside from heritage cream teas and land-mines, but the lack of a clear connection between all that creative activity and the intellectual life of the society leaves the whole project poorly understood, poorly supported and poorly exploited.
If we're going to expect people to help fund the arts, whether through taxation or lotteries, then surely we owe them an attempt at an explanation of what value we think the arts might be to them.
And if I had another two minutes of your time I'd have a go.
--Brian Eno, from a speech in 1995 for a major (or perhaps the major--I don't know anything about it) British art prize
From a can of soda--all punctuation/grammar retained:
815 Green Tea
Cleanness
Refreshment
Naturalism
Freedom
Peace
Green Tea Soda
First encounter of green tea and carbonate of soda. it's 815 Green Tea. The carbonate of soda drink? it's o.k!, but too sweet and stimulating. The green tea? it's o.k!, but bitter and untasty. Now they combine harmoniously, giving birth to 815 Green tea. It gives us neat feeling of green tea and include refreshing character of carbonated soday. Now enjoy your life in 815 Green tea.
Product of Korea
...courtesy the Madeleine L'Engle book Walking On Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. Oh, and it's part one of two, but no peeking at part two until you at least make an attempt at part one. Ready?
Write an incident from your childhood or adolescence that was important to you. "Write in the first person. Nothing cosmic, just an incident. And do not write this for children...Write it for yourselves."
Just saw this on someone else's blog:
'thin places': the spirituality of the celts of ancient britain taught that certain locations/ events were 'thin places', where the division between heaven and earth was said to be at its narrowest.
I think I know a few of these. Have you encountered any? Where/when?
From Richard J. Foster's Celebration of Discipline, an amazing book, a description of how Quakers (the Society of Friends) realized something in 1758 that, well, you'll see:
"John Woolman and others had pricked the conscience of the Society of Friends over their involvement in the demonic institution of slavery. As Philadelphia Yearly Meeting gathered for its business meetings that year, the slavery issue was a major agenda item. A great deal was at stake and the issue was hotly debated. John Woolman, with head bowed and tears in his eyes, sat through the various sessions in complete silence. Finally, after hours of agonizing prayer he rose and spoke. 'My mind is led to consider the purity of the Divine Being and the justice of His judgment, and herein my soul is covered with awfulness [probably in the "full of awe" sense--me]...Many slaves on this continent are oppressed and their cries have entered into the ears of the Most High...It is not a time for delay.' Firmly and tenderly Woolman dealt with the problems of the 'private interests of some persons' and the 'friendships which do not stand upon an immutable foundation.' With prophetic boldness he warned the Yearly Meeting that if it failed to do its 'duty in firmness and constancy' then 'God may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in this matter.'
"The entire Yearly Meeting melted into a spirit of unity as a result of this compassionate witness. They responded as one voice to remove slavery from their midst. John Greenleaf Whittier states that those sessions 'must ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations in the history of the Christian Church.'
"That united decision is particularly impressive when we realize that the Society of Friends was the only body that asked slaveholding members to reimburse their slaves for their time in bondage."
Many years ago my friend Stephanie and I saw a stand of swords for sale at Carnival Supply. They were all metal, all highly decorative, and all the size of cocktail toothpicks. Neither of us had enough money to buy the stand, so we pooled our money so that we could co-own it.
Every year we exchange the swords. One person gets the stand with all the swords save one. The other person keeps that one sword. Then the next year we switch.
Over the years we (mostly I) have lost swords and replaced the metal ones with plastic ones that are gold-painted. And then last year our friend Ali gave me a stand of swords she found at an antique shop somewhere. It's not exactly the same as the original, but it provided a nice set of "backup" swords.
We exchange the swords at New Day, which is the New Year's celebration of the countries-we-made-up, Krohn and Ravenay. And each year one of us writes a story, a legend explaining why these two countries, who have always been at peace, make presents to each other of these symbols of warfare.
Your challenge is to write such a fantasy legend.
Some hopefully helpful bits of background:
The king of Krohn is currently a lion named Kahn. In the past a unicorn has been ruler, and one will be so again.
The queen of Ravenay is a unicorn named Iris. In the past there have been human rulers of this country.
Animals talk in both countries. There are magical creatures like unicorns, dragons, mermaids, dryads, centaurs, etc. but also the common sort of woodland creatures like deer, foxes, wolves, hawks etc. The story could involve humans or animals or both, magic or nonmagical creatures or both.
The enemy of both countries is Daymya, a land to the east (Ravenay is north of Krohn and Daymya touches both borders). Daymya has not threatened Krohn in a long time, but has engaged in many border skirmishes with Ravenay.
There are no magical creatures of any sort in Daymya and the animals do not talk. The people there are taught there's no such thing as magic, and only those who fight on their enemy's territory know otherwise.
Krohn and Ravenay have always been at peace, but of course there are always going to be people who want to stir up trouble for their own profit.
Ravenayan names tend to sound vaguely Welsh or Latin ("Adellen," "Benor"). Krohnian names will only use these letters and letter combinations:
b d f g h k l m n p r s t v y
ah ay eh ee oh oo
e.g. Sahnah, Lahrohn
But don't worry. You won't be judged for accuracy--just how good a legend you can make to account for a set of swords traded between the countries every New Day.
THERE was in this abbess's monastery a certain brother, particularly remarkable for the grace of God, who was wont to make pious and religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of Scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility, in English, which was his native language. By his verses the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven. Others after him attempted, in the English nation, to compose religious poems, but none could ever compare with him, for he did not learn the art of poetry from men, but from God; for which reason he never could compose any trivial or vain poem, but only those which relate to religion suited his religious tongue; for having lived in a secular habit till he was well advanced in years, he had never learned anything of versifying; for which reason being sometimes at entertainments, when it was agreed for the sake of mirth that all present should sing in their turns, when he saw the instrument come towards him, he rose up from table and returned home.
Having done so at a certain time, and gone out of the house where the entertainment was, to the stable, where he had to take care of the horses that night, he there composed himself to rest at the proper time; a person appeared to him in his sleep, and saluting him by his name, said, "Caedmon, sing some song to me." He answered, "I cannot sing; for that was the reason why I left the entertainment, and retired to this place because I could not sing." The other who talked to him, replied, "However, you shall sing." ‚ "What shall I sing?" rejoined he. "Sing the beginning of created beings," said the other. Hereupon he presently began to sing verses to the praise of God, which he had never heard, the purport whereof was thus : We are now to praise the Maker of the heavenly kingdom, the power of the Creator and his counsel, the deeds of the Father of glory. How He, being the eternal God, became the author of all miracles, who first, as almighty preserver of the human race, created heaven for the sons of men as the roof of the house, and next the earth. This is the sense, but not the words in order as he sang them in his sleep; for verses, though never so well composed, cannot be literally translated out of one language into another, without losing much of their beauty and loftiness. Awaking from his sleep, he remembered all that he had sung in his dream, and soon added much more to the same effect in verse worthy of the Deity.
--the Venerable Bede, Ecclesial History of the English Nation, AD 680 or so
Happy birthday to my mom.
She's an amazing person. You should see some of the quilts she's made, and the stacks of jellies and home-canned fruits she creates in her regular dervishes of activity. She seems to always be on the winning team at innumerable Trivia Nights, which means her apartment is overflowing with Pasta House gift certificates and other such prizes when really she was only after the braggin' rights.
And that's just, you know, Current Model Mom. To think this same woman grew up during the Depression, went to work to help support her family, spent a couple of years in the convent with the dream of becoming a teaching sister, was thwarted in that attempt, got out, married a computer guy back when there were no computers, had six kids, has taken rather a lot of trips overseas--it kinda helps put it into perspective that today she'll happily engage in conversation about Thomas Aquinas and then offer her opinion on some Radiohead video I'm watching or prove that she knows all the names of the members of U2.
As I said, amazing.
Happy birthday to my big brother--one of them, anyway.
To the one who used to threaten me with grave harm if I told on him to Mom and Dad--which I always did anyway. I knew which side my bread was buttered on.
To the one who told me he that the reason he ate so much ice cream was that it cooled off his tongue after all the spicy foods he ate. I don't think of it as lying so much as having a creative way of understanding cause and effect. (Also, after I learned the truth, I developed a healthy distrust of what was told to me by authority figures.)
To the one who played wiffle ball with me in the backyard--even if I suspect he was changing the rules as we went along.
To the one who introduced me to the music of the Moody Blues and all the great 70s drug music.
To the one who will still engage me in debate on any and every socio-political issue, debates I may later analyze to see what makes good argumentation and what doesn't.
Happy birthday to Thombo the Clown.
In studying the Bible as a young man, I found intimations of the idea that forms of media favor particular kinds of content and therefore are capable of taking command of a culture. I refer specifically to the Decalogue, the Second Commandment of which prohibits the Israelites from making concrete images of anything. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water beneath the earth." I wondered then, as so many others have, as to why the God of these people would have included instructions on how they were to symbolize, or not symbolize, their experience. It is a strange injunction to include as part of an ethical system unless its author assumed a connection between forms of human communication and the quality of a culture. We may hazard a guess that a people who are being asked to embrace an abstract, universal deity would be rendered unfit to do so by the habit of drawing pictures or making statues or depicting their ideas in any concrete, iconographic forms. The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking. Iconography thus became blasphemy so that a new kind of God could enter a culture. People like ourselves who are in the process of converting their culture from word-centered to image-centered might profit by reflecting on this Mosaic injunction. But even if I am wrong in these conjectures, it is, I believe, a wise and particularly relevant supposition that the media of communication available to a culture are a dominant influence on the formation of the culture's intellectual and social preoccupations.
--Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
The narrator has been visiting Trappist monasteries as part of a writing assignment. Each time the monks start chanting psalms, long-blocked memories of his dead son Michael come back to him. He's just had a particularly powerful experience of sudden grief at Gethsemani Abbey.
As the monks walked by me on their way to their rooms, I was startled to hear my name whispered. Turning around, I came face to face with my old seminary classmate, Tom Barett, now known as Father Daniel. He was thinner than he had been when he had once emphatically dumped me with a cross-body block during a football game. But I felt the raw strength in the arm he threw around my shoulders, as he squeezed and half-carried me along into the preau, a small garden that formed the core of the monastery quadrangle.
He responded immediately to my shaken appearance and asked what was the matter. The pain pushed aside any bravado and in a rush I told him about Michaelís death, the experiences Iíd had in other abbeys, and what had just taken place inside the church. Tom had been standing in front of me with his arms folded, listening. When I finished, he nodded and said, ìHeís after you.î Then, nodding again, as though saying the words had made him more certain of his conclusion, he repeated, ìHeís after you.î
I said nothing in reply. The thought made me sick. Tom continued, explaining how he believed God never stops trying to draw us close to him. ìIf we resist,î he said, ìhe finds ways to get through our barriers. Iím positive heís reaching out to you, and your experience just now is an example. Iím just as certain that your continued involvement with us is no coincidence. I think he brought you here for a very special reason.î
I remained silent at first, even though I was tempted to tell Tom that if God was trying to reach me, I was not interested. While I was glad to regain access to my memories of Michael, they did not offset his loss. That thought finally overrode any desire I had to be polite and I blurted out, ìScrew the sadistic son of a bitch.î
Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today, Frank Bianco
"...In biblical scholarship and its associated disciplines one finds (with a few wonderful exceptions) little sense of excitement. On the one hand, one encounters the work of fundamentalist Protestants, orthodox Jews, and old-fashioned Catholics, each of whose work is characterized for the most part by compulsive-obsessive behavior. Of course this is a generalization, but I have read tons of the stuff. It consists mostly of asking the same old questions, in slightly new ways, so that the answers turn out to be the good old conclusions. This scholarship, if such it is, has the virtue of keeping its engages from thinking about big issues. Much of it reminds me of the weekend morning television cartoons for children, where one or another cartoon animal runs off the edge of a cliff and manages to keep running on thin air, always provided he does not give in to temptation and look down. There is, in the literature I am describing, a real terror: a fear of looking down, of having received views checked against external reality.
"On the other hand, Christian 'liberal' scholarship--for the most part done by Protestants, but increasingly by Catholics as well--often has a lost, bewildered and gloomy quality to it. Later I shall discuss the famous 'Jesus Seminar' which typifies much of liberal Protestant and Catholic thought. Taken collectively, reading the publications of the Jesus Seminar is like stepping into a church basement where the pastor is conducting a support group for guys whose partners have dumped them."
--from Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds, Donald Harman Akenson
Some background on this: in grade school we did the Stations of the Cross every Friday during Lent. We used these little brown booklets that had scripture passages associated with each station. Hearing these passages every week made it easy to commit them to memory. (Once I quoted from one in a note to my "secret Santa"--"A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter, he who finds one finds a treasure." I was such a geek that I really believed everybody had memorized the passages in the Stations booklet and that no one would guess I was the author of the note.) Those books were my first acquaintance with this bit from Isaiah. Purely from a poetical standpoint, I think it's extraordinary, the best possible use of a technique where two lines in a poem have basically the same meaning. (It's a very common poetic form in the Bible which I find tedious when reading long stuff, but with short passages it's rhetorically compelling and also makes passages easier to memorize.) Then consider how influential the main idea of it has become--that someone, if willing to be treated unfairly, can help others; that the loser is the winner in the end. The exact influence of this particular "song" is going to be a major plot point of my Nicodemus novel, so this is a useful background piece for that.
See, my servant shall prosper,
He shall be raised high and greatly exalted.
Even as many were amazed at him--
So marred was his look beyond that of man,
And his appearance beyond that of mortals--
So shall he startle many nations,
Because of him kings shall stand speechless;
For those who have not been told shall see,
Those who have not heard shall ponder it.
---
Who would believe what we have heard?
To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up like a sapling before him,
Like a shoot from the parched earth.
There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him,
No appearance that would attract us to him.
He was spurned and avoided by men,
A man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,
One of those from whom men hide their faces,
Spurned, and we held him in no esteem.
---
Yet it was our infirmities he bore, our sufferings that he endured,
While we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins,
Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole--
By his stripes we were healed.
We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way;
But the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all.
---
Though he was harshly treated
He submitted and opened not his mouth,
Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers,
He was silent and opened not his mouth.
Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away,
And who would have thought any more of his destiny?
When he was cut off from the land of the living,
And smitten for the sin of his people,
A grave was assigned to him among the wicked
And a burial place with evildoers,
Though he had done no wrong nor spoken any falsehood.
[But the Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity.]
---
If he gives his life as an offering for sin,
He shall see his descendants in a long life,
And the will of the Lord will be accomplished through him.
Because of his affliction he shall see the light in the fullness of days;
Through his suffering, my servant will justify many,
And their guilt he shall bear.
Therefore I will give him his portion among the great,
and he shall divide spoils with the mighty,
Because he surrendered himself to death,
And was counted among the wicked;
And he shall take away the sins of many,
And win pardon for their offenses.
--Isaiah 52:13-15-Isaiah 53 (New American Bible translation)
I didn't really want to call this "Superstitions" because that's not exactly what I'm looking for. Still, it's close, and I want to elicit as many responses as possible, as happened when I had the "nursery rhymes" game. I figure if I title this something that people are likely to Google, my pool of potential respondents increases.
So...
I was thinking about rules this morning when I was walking in the park. There was a robin in my path and, like I always do, I shifted my course a little to avoid disturbing him. The rule is that if he just runs a short distance away, that's all right, but if my approach startles him into actually flying, that's bad. This is a rule I've known for so long I just take it for granted, but it's probably not a rule anyone else has ever heard of. I'm looking for rules like that. Not the ones that are very well known, like "don't walk under a ladder" or "don't open an umbrella in the house," but the more obscure ones, like "it's all right to take a blossom that's fallen on the ground, but don't pick it off the tree."
What rules do you know?
Suppose one were a fish. No finer place to live than this. Falls continually drowning air within the pool so that it was a pleasure simply to breathe. Like (supposing one were not a water-breather) the high, fresh, wind-renewed air of an alpine meadow. Wonderful, and thoughtful of them so to provide for him, supposing that they thought of his or anyone's happiness or comfort. And here were no predators, and few competitors, because (though a fish couldn't be supposed to know it) the stream above was shallow and stony and so was the stream below, so that nothing approaching him in size came into the pool to contest with him for the constant fall of bugs from the dense and various woods which overhung. Really, they had thought of everything, supposing they thought of anything.
Yet (supposing that it was not his choice at all to be a swimmer here) how condign and terrible a punishment, bitter an exile. Mounted in liquid glass, unable to breathe, was he to make back-and-forth forever, biting at mosquitoes? He supposed that to a fish that taste was the toothsome matter of his happiest dreams. But if one were not a fish, what a memory, the endless multiplication of those tiny drops of bitter blood.
--from Little, Big, John Crowley
Stream and Sun at Glendalough
Through intricate motions ran
Stream and gliding sun
And all my heart seemed gay:
Some stupid thing that I had done
Made my attention stray.
Repentance keeps my heart impure;
But what am I that dare
Fancy that I can
Better conduct myself or have more
Sense than a common man?
What motion of the sun or stream
Or eyelid shot the gleam
That pierced my body through?
What made me live like these that seem
Self-born, born anew?
--W.B. Yeats