I once asked James Tate what he thought of writing in form. He replied that one can’t write like a romantic anymore because it’s inapplicable. I think Paul Verlaine and Leonard Bernstein would disagree. Says Bernstein:

“Form is not a mold for Jello, into which we pour notes and expect the result automatically to be a rondo, or a minuet, or a sonata. The real function of form is to take us on a half-hour journey of continuous symphonic progress. To do this, the composer must have his inner road map. He must have the ability to know what the next destination will be–in other words, what the next note has to be to convey a sense of rightness, a sense that whatever note succeeds the last is the only possible note that can happen at that precise instant.”

Lately it’s occurred to me that there is only one aspect of Bernstein’s five (melody, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, arrangement) credited by most of these hipster fucks who look at me in disbelief when I mention enjoying Emma “Baby Spice” Bunton’s music (and having absolutely no tolerance for the band Television). Arrangement. And, to make matters worse, it’s only accidental arrangement as a byproduct of instrumentation. My roommate and my sister are the two highest authorities on music, as far as I’m concerned. My roommate declares, “I like this because there is a good rhythm, you have to dance, and a nice melody.” My sister declares, “my friends and I can sing along to this one.” One could say the same about even the early Gershwin. One who writes in form is considered immature, and one who plays out of form is considered immature. If art as education, I mean in a Brechtian sense, is in any way still our only hope, god save us all.

My roommate knows when I am lying, she knows when I am only pretending to understand what she’s saying, and she knows many other things about me that even I don’t know–so when I am asked “did you enjoy that music performance?” and I say yes, she knows that I am lying. But why did I not enjoy it? I asked myself that very question for the duration of the performance–and I came up with some answers.

Leonard Bernstein discusses Beethoven in terms of: melody, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, and arrangement. He describes how Beethoven fails in all these categories–but that somehow the music explodes via a different measurement, which might explain why Wagner considered himself the Jesus to Beethoven’s John the Baptist. Louis Armstrong discusses quality of New Orleans bands in terms of those who really lock in together, who know their shit the best, are tight…and then there’s one other set in the music world, so far as I can tell–and that’s the secretaries. My roommate described herself as excellent at following scientific protocol but not especially experienced thinking for herself. And there you have it–it is very easy to set out a few chord changes, mix in Bernstein’s elements, and say you’ve written or performed a song–but that doesn’t mean you’ve succeeded aesthetically, nor do I think it’s a matter of opinion–music theory can deconstruct a perfect song and allow one to exploit the individual elements to create something absolutely horrific.

And my roommate taught me what a musician is: a person. These secretaries will never melt upon hearing a note, nor will they shiver, and

-those who truly feel this;

-i can only ever love;

-tears in their eyes;

-without being instructed;
fin.

Tim Blanning -BBC History

“Art is no longer viewed as being representational or as recreational but as essentially expressive–that’s at the heart of the romantic revolution. It changes the purpose of culture from serving some other cause or patron to being artist-centered, that is, expressing what the artist feels inside himself or herself, and once that lep has been made from a work-centered to an artist-centered aesthetic, then the way has been cleared for music, which is the most expressive of all the arts, the way is cleared for music to move to the top of the heap.”

“One of the red threads that runs through [Wagner's The Ring] is a critique of power, that it is the lust for power…[that it] corrupts and that there is in this constant struggle…the demands of love which must be privileged. So in that sense the meaning of The Ring was diametrically opposed to the ethos of the German empire with its triumphalism and its materialism. [ . . . ] If Hitler had understood…what [Wagner] was exposing…he would have [realized that] what he was trying to do was fundamentally misguided. [ . . . Wagner] would have been appalled. [ . . . ] He believed that Bismarck was ‘a brutal barbarian.’ [ . . . ] He was so appalled by the German militarism after 1871 that he talked about emigrating to the United States of America.”

“Professor Feldblum Introduces Moral Values Project”

Press Release - Website - 27 Nov 06 @ Georgetown.

One’s sexual orientation is morally neutral, but the positive communication engendered by sex concomitant with one’s orientation is necessary and unique, and some would consider positive communication a good. Encountering those who consider homosexuality an aberration, an evil, allows potential dialogue introducing the question, “is it thus regarded merely because of something in Leviticus?” And is purely religious evidence reason enough to enforce anti-gay law? Tolerance is not enough, although it is a necessary first step. I find Feldblum’s project hopeful and admirable, but I think back to those I’ve known who have one book on their shelf, and who believe dinosaurs and gays never existed, and that a nation built on Christian values can uphold a separation of Church and State, and I don’t think that a handful of wealthy intellectuals can do much to change the world…except via violence.

“The Bin Ladens”

Steve Coll - Press Release - Website - 24 Apr 08 @ London School of Economics and Political Science.

I suppose it’s no wonder that Bill Clinton played saxophone and George Bush is the guy everyone wants to drink a beer with, that somehow the key to American power is to appear simple, normal, middle-class, and just seem to fall into the good fortune of great fortune, all during the time of MTV’s Real World, and the explosion of the internet. I went out with a girl who did a lot of scoffing, and she scoffed at me for having read Zinn’s People’s History, and made some comment about it being a pernicious load of misguiding shit, and only now do I begin to wonder if, honestly, Leopold and Loeb are of more timeless relevance than Sacco and Vanzetti–I think yes. And I have trouble understanding the connection between the shits I went to high school with, all five-hundred of them very handsome, captains of the football team, graduating with highest honors, and going on to Harvard, yet unable to lead a decent conversation. I always liked to assume our enemies to be a ragtag group of fundamentalists who just happened to luck out back on 9/11–no–can it be that they’re just like us? The nation’s poor misled by the nation’s billionaires? Is it true that the bin Ladens have a rags-to-riches story that rivals anything Horatio Alger wrote? A Kennedy family with high ethics? When I stop answering the phone because all my friends have decided it’d be better to defer their dreams until after they have their own law practices and can let others work for them, they tell me “you’re so naive–honestly, you can make your fortune, and then be an artist,”–if you still have a soul. But it occurred to me today–rich people don’t have to worry about dying–because they have health care! Do you remember when Kennedy died? Do you remember the fiery chariot that swept down from the clouds and took his golden figure back to the heavens?

Human Security and Human Development in the Arab Region

Amat Alsoswa - Website - 15 Apr 08 @ Princeton

Russian Presidential Election

Peter Rutland - Website - 11 Mar 08 @ Middlebury College

Jules et Jim. It’s too great for me to speak of. When I first saw it I was sitting in an uncomfortable chair at a desk in a basement. I thought “what’s so great about this film–there’s nothing special about it.” Perhaps you cannot recognize greatness in anything until you’ve witnessed the vastness of mediocrity surrounding it, which sometimes takes years. Perhaps that is why it took me so many years before I was struck by the genius of Lord of the Flies after being repeatedly unimpressed by Orwell’s work. I should have been impressed long before–but something finally struck me. Same with this–I think I needed to see many more films–i wonder that beauty and greatness are what we are born to expect as the norm–as babies it is all beauty and greatness we experience, and why should it be any different, why should we not continually be amazed by life? So amazing things are dull, naturally. But when life finally grows duller than that–then we can look at amazing works of art and see how they rise to our infant expectations of beauty and the sublime. Jules et Jim did it this time–I wanted to see it all, over and again, I wanted to be part of the film–of the filmmaking–of the cameras and the words and characters. It’s a beautiful film–when you can appreciate timing and movement space–which I did not before, and perhaps I do not to the extent I should now–it is a great wonder. I love it.

We sit for hours without moving in the dark together, sometimes laughing, sometimes gasping, and then an absence I do not understand, something between Stendhal Syndrome, Mont Blanc, a stroke, and the way I accidently reply oui when speaking English, and then the film is over, and the clothes we have hanging all over the furniture to dry, they’re still damp, it’s something in the way we see a doe in our backyard, or stop for a bunny in the road, when la bête du Gévaudan, or the enormity of time, the concept that all these characters are dead, that these secrets will never be answered, and yet are modern, that Princess Di was killed and we both found out upon awaking, it’s Martha Argerich performing Chopin’s Scherzo no. 3, it’s the world devouring us and the discovery that it’s not so very dark inside, and not so very big, it is all these things, but above all it’s the absence of a word.

I found Das Fidele Gefängnis to be very funny, very modern in its comedic virtues, making an excellent show of allowing the audience to see the whole picture while characters do not, so that we stamp our feet gleefully, awaiting what fun we just know must occur soon. It was acted very well–and all the characters are lovable, every single one, which gains points in my book–I think this could be characterized thus as a farce, as there’s never any immediate danger, even amidst marital mistrust, stalkers, and half the film spent in jail, everyone is always smiling, and for the few seconds during which there are hard feelings–they’re quickly resolved and kisses result. Perhaps most funny, I had to watch it three times, as the man is being released from jail, he and the guard go to hug and kiss each other goodbye, and as they’re nearing for the kiss, the guard belches and the kiss is given up. And this, this from a country in which I thought nothing existed in film but expressionism, noir, and Fassbinder. With all these films by Wegener I’ve been seeing, I was under the impression that this would be dark and twisted–I was wrong–the last place anyone would guess this from is Germany. I’m very glad to have seen this.

Feuillade’s next installment in Les Vampires series is not nearly as good as the last, partially because Irma Vep isn’t nearly as sexy. But also the plot is kinda dull. However, I will note one piece of interest: a flashback. It’s never occurred to me before now that media dependent on time, similar to our own experience living, can only represent a present moment. While we have our imaginations to paint the past and future for us, that’s an entirely interior phenomenon, and film can only convey it through a verbal recollection or a visual representation of a subject’s imagination.  And when it comes to a silent film, including a lengthy paragraph of text is far less desirable than showing the memory; however, this possibility immediately introduces a question of reliability, which we’re familiar with through literature. We don’t question the narrator, that is, the one who is writing these title cards,  the voyeur. But this is something new: taking the film out of the narrator’s hands, giving it to a character, whose sequence may or may not have occurred. We don’t know, nor is that subject addressed. But this is the first film I’ve seen so far that has such an element of flashback and questionable reliability.

Hm, there is the WC Fields film, The Fatal Glass of Beer, which presents the same dilemma to the audience, but that did not strike me as this does. Perhaps because I’m seeing these as an evolution.

The most important thing Meredith taught me was that I should shut the fuck up. Meantime, I have no regrets about the scene I just made in an Applebees in the middle of the Maine woods, in which I got into a very angry debate over French/American political relations, which always comes down to the same thing, someone throws out a stereotype about the French or the Roma or the any other group of people in the world, and I ask for some sort of evidence, of which nobody ever has any, and then I remind that the group we ourselves belong to not only is associated with some pretty bad stereotypes, but that in my experience they’re all true. And then everyone gets offended and pissed off because, well, we’re angels, and it’s the rest of the world who’s fucked up. So I’ve completely had it with hipsters, intellectuals, young people, the inveterate, fanatics, zealots, and artists. The only people I still like are: alcoholics, nymphomaniacs, chefs.

One might call Don Quixote “self-reflexive” in the way Cervantes’ own work finds its way onto the bookshelves of Don Quixote, and is soon after substantially criticized. Is this humorous? Only under the condition that we know whom Cervantes is, and that he wrote what we’re reading, and perhaps a bit about his past literary failures. And if somebody uses the same technique now, is it postmodern? And if it is postmodern, is it postmodern because it’s a borrowed technique? Or does its being borrowed just make it derivative? And if one bases an entire work on such techniques, is that then postmodern? Or is it what we now call “ironic”—a term which is now defined as “any act, pretense, or creation that is uninspired, derivative, uneducated, misinformed, or otherwise pageanted as unique, employed as a pretense for an antithetical interior.” When I attended a class on “Modern American Drama,” I scoffed at the idea that “one cannot begin to understand modern American drama before understanding what came before it.” And we spent 90% of the class reading wretched 19th century plays…but I was one of the lucky ones, because I accidentally fell into studies that led me away from our contemporary liberal arts education, it’s precisely that education that makes me cry every time I see someone reading Lolita (you don’t deserve to read Lolita!) or Ulysses (have you read anything else by Joyce? Do you own a dictionary?) or hear somebody exclaim that they’ve decided to begin a new religion…in earnest. I haven’t read Ulysses. Because I’m not ready yet. And I shouldn’t’ve read Lolita.

The world of art, in my eyes, is a meritocracy. Do you deserve to do what you’re trying to do? So I’m not bothered by musicians who don’t understand music theory so long as they have large musical vocabularies (thereby forcing them to have some unorthodox system of theory). I met a chef recently and asked her what she thought of a certain classy restaurant (I don’t own nice enough clothes to eat there) whose owners had no formal culinary education. She said their quality was inconsistent. But so was Paul Verlaine’s. Why is cheap porn legal when it tries so hard to ruin the choreography? If I ever hear “it’s just sex” or “I always thought it was pretty straightforward” again–I’m going to get violent–and I don’t mean sadistic, I just mean violent. I am bothered by artists who neglect studying history and chemistry—they forget that Picasso illustrated a volume of Buffon’s Natural History, or that Duchamp studied classical methods of painting, or that Warhol was a practicing Catholic (the parallels between Catholicism and his art should make you laugh…only they just occurred to me). I am bothered by poets who don’t live as if words are actions, who don’t understand verbal economics, who don’t press back into the cervix of literature before struggling to lick their mothers’ lips…which is where Aristophanes comes in:

Wouldn’t it be considered avant-garde if, during a play, the playwright himself walked out and began discussing the merits of his own work, the demerits of others’ work, and discussing the work we are currently auditing? There’s a word I like: audit. That’s why I only read poetry aloud—it belongs in the air. Imagine it in a film, actually, if in the middle of a comedy the director began speaking directly to the audience. And if that’s not strange enough, imagine if it wasn’t the director who was speaking, but rather if one of the characters began speaking as if he himself was the director, completely leaving his role in the film and pretending to be a person who exists outside of the film in reality, who helped create the film. Pretty fucked up. And yet this happened—to relatively little acclaim—twenty years before the trial of Socrates.

My second comment is this: I find it fascinating to see Aristophanes disagreeing with Socrates, to read Plato’s arguable portrait of Gorgias, to consider the idea that proponents of Aeschylus hated those of Euripides, or to recognize that American schools like to shy away from Plato’s critiques on democracy or Plutarch’s illustrious depiction of Lycurgus and his utopian Sparta. Have people really been people ever since the beginning? How quaint!

GO TO CHARM SCHOOL, YOU LIBERAL ARTS FUCKS. CHARM ME.

p.s. i need someplace to live during september. can i live with you?

Bloom shows how elements of Poetical Sketches I’ve hitherto taken seriously are actually meant to be ironic, parodic of Augustan verse. Ohh. I didn’t recognize there was a history of “mad songs” nor was I quite sure what they were. It’s hard to separate oneself from some era and read its verse properly. What struck me this time around was reading the poems that have become somewhat ingrained in me and thinking, “this is Blake? this is Blake?” How sweet I roam’d from field to field? I would have guessed Byron wrote that, that it fits in with his Occasional Pieces, written from the forests, not from the London sweatshops. The importance of Poetical Sketches, in my opinion, is that it shows Blake as being a well-read, opinionated poet from the start–being very fluent in classical and biblical mythology as well as more contemporary literature, even having a large store of imagery and metaphors to play with. It’s sometimes difficult to jump into “Thel” or “Heaven and Hell” without somewhat a sense of Blake’s unreliability unless you can be quite sure he’s grounded as a poet, the same as “Songs of Innocence” may come across as immature if one isn’t fully convinced that the poet is quite self-assured, directed precisely as an arrow.

When there’s a great historical question, an event that has baffled minds for over half a century, upon which hinged the fate of the earth, and whose participants were famously esoteric about the whole thing, it’s natural that what we imagine took place would be fascinating. In reality it wouldn’t be. But, let’s say someone wrote a Tony Award winning drama about it, then it Would be interesting. Well, it isn’t. During my foray into armchair physics I found the name of this play as a speculative reconstruction of the last friendly meeting of Bohr and Heisenberg. Oh well, perhaps I only expect everything post-Albee to be Albeean–drama, which tends to be the only niche for the twists of old short stories, is perhaps falling the way of all New Yorker flesh. Boring. Implicated climaxes. Colorless. More mundane than any day of my week. I’m glad I read it, so I could take it off my Amazon wishlist. And I made a new friend. And it shows avenues of reading physics as philosophy that Dino and I had not yet considered, quantum philosophy rather than string philosophy.