Chet Atkins – the Night Atlanta Burned. Hadn’t heard this piece in years.
Recent Comments
 | "Henchman Of Justice… on Priorities |
 | Forest Queen on Priorities |
 | Just Watchin on Priorities |
 | Ed Voice on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
| Forest Queen on Priorities |
 | Eric Kirk on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
| Ed Voice on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
 | That Other Anonymous on Darryl Cherney to Join Me on K… |
| That Other Anonymous on Darryl Cherney to Join Me on K… |
 | suzy blah blah on Darryl Cherney to Join Me on K… |
| That Other Anonymous on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
 | Narration on Darryl Cherney to Join Me on K… |
| Ed Voice on Darryl Cherney to Join Me on K… |
| Narration on Darryl Cherney to Join Me on K… |
| Eric Kirk on For a Crisp Spring Saturday… |
91 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 25, 2012 at 6:38 am
Bolithio
Nice Eric. I heard allot of this growing up. It also puts me in the mood for Merl Travis and Jimmie Rodgers.
September 25, 2012 at 9:11 am
Unk John
I have an old copy of the album, Eric.
Also, I saw Chet Atkins on a late night talk show many, many years ago and was dumbfounded as I watched him play “Dixie” and “Yankee Doodle” at the same time. Not as a medley, mind you, both songs together.
September 25, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Ernie Branscomb
One of my favorite albums (among many) is “Ray Charles, Country & Western” album.
September 25, 2012 at 8:47 pm
JR
Thanks Eric. What a nice treat!
September 25, 2012 at 9:19 pm
Unk John
Ah, yes, Ernie. “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music”, by Ray Charles. “Born to Lose”, “I Can’t Stop Loving You”, “You Don’t Know Me”, and many others on that one. I think he even did “Bye, Bye Love” on it.
September 25, 2012 at 10:33 pm
suzy blah blah
-Ernie, suzy’s beginning to understand how you good ol’ cowboys learned to be bad-boys in solidarity in order to uphold your redneck patriarchy so well. This evil music that you hayseeds listen to and laugh along with is the kind of trash that promotes lying, cheating, suffering, pain, and deception. It should’ve been stomped out years ago in order to protect the moral backbone of our once great land. Now we’re stuck inside a whole society based on the lie. No surprise to anyone familiar with their cultural roots.
September 26, 2012 at 9:24 am
Ernie Branscomb
Suzy
I have been happily married for 40 years, I know of only one time that I may have been drunk past the legal limit. (I walked home) I’ve been able to successfully support myself, and run a successful business. I count my friends as my most valuable assets. My word is my bond and my name is my honor.
So….. How’s your life going?
September 26, 2012 at 6:47 pm
bolithio
Suzy, so your saying we should have banned blues and country… and replace it with…? While your at it, lets purge all art that deals with real life. That sure sounds like a fun place!
September 26, 2012 at 6:51 pm
Unk John
Also, Suzy, how will we defend ourselves if Mars Attacks? O, the horror!
September 26, 2012 at 6:53 pm
bolithio
This song may be truly immortal when you think of the current economic state and the widening gap between rich and poor….
September 26, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Unk John
Is Suzy also familiar with John Prine?
September 26, 2012 at 7:39 pm
Unk John
I meant to mention that Mr. Peabody’s coal train is still a problem in the Powder River basin in Wyoming and Montana as we speak. Peabody Energy is digging it right out of the ground and sending it by train (Each train is 1.6 miles long) to the west coast to be shipped to China so they can fire their electricity plants to allow their factories to keep people in this country unemployed.
Sorry, I got carried away. On a lighter note, I would like to mention that John Fogerty has released a terrific version of “Paradise.”
September 27, 2012 at 2:01 am
suzy blah blah
-Ernie, suzy can assure you that my life is going very good, and is quite superior in quality to what you describe. Bolithio, your reply makes no sense at all. Maybe you didn’t listen to the song suzy posted. It is the furthest thing from “art that deals with real life” that there is. But then if you mistake real life for the grotesque stereotype that the song portrays … well no wonder you don’t make any sense.
September 27, 2012 at 6:47 am
Plain Jane
I’m not a fan of most country music (I do love Michelle Shocked and a few other quasi-country performers); but understand why it appeals to so many, especially when they are down and need the reminder that they aren’t the only ones hurting.
People who say songs about cheating and heartbreak are perpetuating red neck mentality and should be stomped out, but music advocating the murder of gays should be accepted because it financially benefits the community can’t be taken seriously.
September 27, 2012 at 6:52 am
Plain Jane
John Denver’s version of Paradise, the one most familiar to me.
September 27, 2012 at 12:22 pm
suzy blah blah
-only a totally brainwashed zombie thinks that a sexist song is about “cheating and heartbreak”.
September 27, 2012 at 12:56 pm
bolithio
Thats me, a brainwashed zombie who hates women. When did Suzy become so righteous? This is for you:
September 28, 2012 at 10:45 am
suzy blah blah
- i don’t like lying and cheating. And i don’t like hearing it celebrated on the airwaves. You can stay in denial if you want, but it’s obvious to me that these guys are morally decadent sexist rednecks.
September 28, 2012 at 10:48 am
Eric Kirk
Are there no rock songs about lying and cheating?
September 28, 2012 at 11:08 am
suzy blah blah
- i didn’t say “about”, i said “celebrating”.
September 28, 2012 at 12:16 pm
Eric Kirk
Do many country songs celebrate it? I seem to remember country songs where the cheater gets shot, his schlong cut off, or something along those lines.
September 28, 2012 at 1:32 pm
suzy blah blah
-it does no good to talk about it abstractly by generalizing. I’m referring to the specific song i posted above. And i’m calling it sexist. Do you deny that? The reason i posted it is because it came up as a suggested play on youtube on the menu following the song you originally posted. Another chet atkins song, and this one i noticed also had ray charles on it, who John and Ernie had just gushed about. So i posted it to show another side to the music everyone was swooning over. Bunch of hypocrites.
September 28, 2012 at 4:19 pm
Eric Kirk
I just listened to it. It sounds like satire, with the point being one of irony – I’m not sure I’d apply “glorification” to it soas to suggest that the singers actually advocate cheating.
It’s like suggesting that All in the Family endorses racism because the character Archie Bunker is a racist.
September 28, 2012 at 4:43 pm
suzy blah blah
-the only thing ironic is that you’re defending sexism.
September 28, 2012 at 6:19 pm
JK
Sexism? Are you seriously trying to imply that only men lie & cheat? Or, even, that they do it any more than women? If so, you need to get out more.
September 28, 2012 at 6:50 pm
suzy blah blah
-well, suzy’s not here to nitpick about how you want to classify the offense. I’m saying that i think the song is morally deplorable.
September 28, 2012 at 8:04 pm
JK
I’ll agree with that. Technically, though, I have to say even the song you posted doesn’t glorify it, it just minimizes it. Just a couple of good ol’ boys being naughty, and joking about not tattling. Hey, what harm could come from that? I mean besides STD’s, divorce, losing custody of children, or impregnating some girl who didn’t know you weren’t single.
September 28, 2012 at 9:49 pm
suzy blah blah
- i won’t tell anybody what you wrote about STDs, divorce, etc.? –suzy didn’t see a thing.
September 29, 2012 at 7:28 am
bolithio
I think you guys are taking life way too seriously. Music, like literature, is all about expression of those ideas we suppress. Imagine if you couldn’t write about sex or murder?
September 29, 2012 at 10:12 am
Narration
Below, another of John Prine’s songs, as Unk John reminded me of — I can still hear a friend with her steel-strong voice singing this one as I first heard it when we were both performers (this is a lonnng time ago).
I think it shows the greatest edge songwriting can have, where each phrase gives an image and a story, and at the same time a jumping off place for imagination to fly very personally, wherever it will, for each who hears it. That friend left her strong message too, beginning out of the South Dakota prairies.
I don’t know about the album Ernie Branscomb mentioned, but I did listen carefully to the ‘didn’t see a thing song because you posted about it, suzy.
I wouldn’t deny a thing about much of the ‘country’-and-diss-your-wife-and-life music that shows up on the radio a lot these days — can’t listen to any of it.
However, I have to say that this George Jones song strikes me as very much in the ironic mode. Sure, the first verse lays out a clear litany of bad behavior, and the chorus seems to support it — though as an old singer of folk among other music I have to say I was ready for the bite there — it was just a message too loud and clear.
And sure enough, the second verse turns it around, by gently reminding that if you’re going to lie about cheating, you’ll do the same on what you owe in the circle of the same ‘good old boys’.
I’ve heard that kind of irony many times, along with the chicken-pickín skilfully done because they like both, in Saturday night places real cowboys and cowgirls inhabit. The roots of story and a morality are most often there, out nearer the stars, and that’s something I’ll trust hasn’t changed so much, at least among the ones who really live there. One time I found myself writing some poetry about it, particularly a young woman of a certain quiet to her, that I found came from riding a 40,000 acre Eastern Oregon ranch. Well, I can still see the sunset rodeo light, where I slowly found this out.
I smile, suzy. You know I also know right where you were coming from, and good to hear your voice there. Too noisy for the moment over in that other place, isn’t it.
September 29, 2012 at 11:26 am
suzy blah blah
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XtBmIB6rKiQ/TPlJKR27q5I/AAAAAAAAE8Q/oD7jeXo4MUM/s400/0001-0037-4%257EWolf-City-Rodeo-1917-Posters.jpg
September 29, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Narration
Thanks, suzy. I really like it, and a good fit.
You know, talking about these things got me to dig around and find that book of poetry, before I go out for the day.
I couldn’t quite show the one about the cowgirl, but here is what came before and after, and one more. It’s quite something to reread all there was; thinking I know that fellow who wrote it, and how much he may be relied upon to still be around, in different voices.
Blue spruce tones, and soft blue skies
The wind’s warm fingers beckon the caressing grass
People here show a stately quirt
Growing out of long days
Smoothed along the face of ancient green hills
Calmed by the sun’s force
Strength clarified in the rolling thunder
Funny how such an ancient place
Weaves unbroken spells of endless youth
—
I always have to choose
Because I always want to know
None of us can live with archetypes
No matter how sweet
We always need the real things
No matter what it costs
And everyone has their equal value in this world
Just as they are
—
Run free in the night air
Just as warm as your skin
As the wind’s forceful rise
Tears through your hair, and aloft
Fir boughs set moon shadows twisting, dancing
On the ground, dust motes find your eyes
While in the sea above, one or two
Paint the sky with their last bright lonely trail
—
from Wind Chimes, copyright 1979
September 29, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Narration
‘stately quiet’, that’s supposed to be.
What I get for typing with one finger while holding the book open.
September 29, 2012 at 2:39 pm
suzy blah blah
- “Unbroken spells”, except the next stanza’s missing … oh well. Suzy believes archetypes are real energy. It’s our projection that isn’t real (archetypal image = an illusion, idolatry). A sweet illusion, sometimes.
Very beautiful poetry, Narration. Only thing wrong –it doesn’t keep going.
September 29, 2012 at 4:27 pm
Narration
Well, it does; it’s a whole book
And you’re right about something missing. We give what we can, and not always with explanation, though it’s not a hard case here.
Archetypes do have energy. For me though, there’s something as came in a waking dream about the many rooms in a house. In some of those rooms you have to be making something. Sometimes it is shared, and sometimes not, but I think the need is that the building of the things, for each person, sufficiently often and properly is acknowledged.
If you wonder about the syntax, it’s probably about the strangely comforted discomforting dinner, across from the decidedly germanic woman at that time involved.
Anyway, thank you, suzy. It’s nice to hear the things you said.
September 29, 2012 at 8:19 pm
Narration
Well, that came out fairly contorted, didn’t it. I will blame trying to edit on a phone-sized thing for at least a substantial part of this. I have to admit it was pleasant sitting outside, though.
The main clarifier would be that the waking image came in a moment sitting across the table from the woman of the comforting-discomforting dinner.
The rest, I don’t know that you care to know, suzy, but it was an intense experience, and I think you like some things of those.
Thanks again.
September 30, 2012 at 4:03 pm
suzy blah blah
-Narration, thanks for the bless up. And especially for all the searching that you must’ve had had to do to piece together the whole “prodigal pink shoe story”. Haha. That’s amazing. It is very well received by suzy to hear that you thought so much of it as to go to all that trouble of searching the many episodes out on the different blogs and scroll to the different months they were published. Awesome. You don’t know how good that makes suzy feel. Maybe you can tell me how the story ends someday because i forgot … and am too lazy to search it out myself
I think there were at least two alternative endings that i posted, one here and one at Heraldo’s. Or it might have been at Ernie’s. I can’t keep track. The one with the raven shitting on Plain Jane’s head when she stepped outside of her cubicle to take a break and contemplate moral correctness, as it flies away with the shoes in its beak, was my favorite if i remember it right. The image of black and pink against the blue sky sticks with me like an advertising logo for … uh. Anyway there’s a lot of parallel universes and different dimensions that go to make up our existence. CAW CAW. Most are only aware of three.
When you speak of “many many rooms”, that’s an archetypal image for sure (in my father’s house there are many many mansions) . I have been there. And i go back there now to write a song for those who can see through the cultural lies. Suzy can’t say where i’ll be posting my thoughts next because where the spirit carries me i will go. It may be on HH, or some other resource account. Or it may never be at all and then that is where you will find my story continued. Or maybe not. enough crucifixion energy has come down and enough of my blood has been spilled. It could be time for suzy to move on. My fullness here has outlived itself. Time to throw away this crown of thorns and blow this popsicle stand. I was gonna wait ’til Dec 21st but patience isn’t one of my
best virtues. Suzy has restless boots, LOL!, (that’s for the shit-kickers). But for real, an opportunity has come up and i may be leaving Humboldt soon, for good. It means that i’ll be very very involved in, and busy with, the new project i’m likely to be embarking on. I’m sure that it’s no loss to Eric’s blog gang. They are likely applauding. Cheers boys.
But suzy’s no fool, i understand that you are one of my few readers who relates to the position that i espouse. The others here, with maybe an exception of one or two, are lost to it. The majority shapes itself in conformity to an ugly cultural meme and the show goes on, the rodeo of death continues. Why today the commercials on Superbowl sunday cost a couple of zillion dollars. That’s progress and it’s good clean fun, without any tits falling out of blouses hopefully. Or if they do, wink wink, i didn’t see a thing.
I’m not saying that Eric doesn’t have the “right” to be glorifying him by posting this a**hole, Chet Atkins. I have a deep respect for his right to post whatever sexist hillbilly he wants to. If he want’s to paint his hat red for a day, whatever. If it makes him more popular with the good old cowboy clan, and maybe pulls some votes over to his agendas from those who’s roots go back to the south, more power to him. I’m not stepping in the way. Just pointing out that everyone isn’t so blind as to be fooled by morally repugnant cultural idols like Atkins, ew, sooooo disgusting. What’s really really telling is all the passive aggression it raises in the good old boy’s clique. Not a peep of protest from the long list of so called liberal thinkers who habitually post here. Hypocrites, sexists, and liars all tapping their toes to the perverted beat. And they even have a token woman here who goes along with the BS.
But back to the topic. I appreciate that the experience was intense for you. I don’t need to know the details to respect that. Many many rooms. And the “making being acknowledged” is how reality happens. I’m with you on that. Totally.
huggles,
s
oh, oh, oh, i just remembered it, the logo in the back of my mind –black pink and blue– how could suzy forget the most important archetype of all?!
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSOJwIqCb9cWSc0EBbzyRq9UN1Inryu97eiCTZzNdTGPyzNXa3y4w
September 30, 2012 at 6:23 pm
Eric Kirk
I just don’t think the song is pro-cheating. I think it’s the opposite. Hence — irony.
September 30, 2012 at 7:50 pm
JK
I think Suzy may be venting a little strongly, but she has a point. Even if it’s not pro-cheating, it’s joking about it. Kind of like how gangster rap ‘jokes’ about killing cops, or molesting ‘hoes.’ If the joke isn’t humorous to you, and the subject matter is disturbing, it can be irritating to listen to.
Having said that, if it’s done well, just about anything CAN be funny. I think Monte Python proved that…
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!”
October 1, 2012 at 6:37 am
bolithio
Whose the “token women” around here anyways?
Oh and if your never a hypocrite Suzy, Im the fucking pope. I still cant believe you are evoking the ‘us and them’ thing over an old country song.
Ill say it again:
Music, like literature, is all about expression of those ideas we suppress. Imagine if you couldn’t write about sex or murder?
If you really are so offended by that song, than you must hate Bob Dylan, Johny Cash, the Beatles, well damn near every artist in every genre who happens to sing about the universal themes of humanity – life, death, love and hate. If your not listening to Christian rock, tell me some artists who dont sing about these themes?
October 1, 2012 at 9:00 am
Eric Kirk
I think Suzy may be venting a little strongly, but she has a point. Even if it’s not pro-cheating, it’s joking about it. Kind of like how gangster rap ‘jokes’ about killing cops, or molesting ‘hoes.’ If the joke isn’t humorous to you, and the subject matter is disturbing, it can be irritating to listen to.
You know, that’s actually a good point. If something hits close to home in some way, it might not be so funny. In fact, there were plenty of people who didn’t find Archie Bunker funny, because the character was too real for them. And maybe the song comes across as callous to anyone actually in some kind of pain because of those actions.
I’m going to swallow hard and apologize to Suzy.
Sorry Suzy!
October 1, 2012 at 9:04 am
JK
Wow! I thought I was the token dick around here. Apparently there’s no shortage. Music is an expressive art form, but it’s definitely not only of ideas we suppress. Most of it actually seems to be about love and war, two things we don’t suppress in the least.
Music, like any aesthetic art can be judged by its content. If you don’t agree with someone’s judgement, fine. It is, however, unlikely in the extreme that you will be able to force them to like it by insulting and swearing at them.
Oh, by the way, there is a significant percentage of musicians who perform purely instrumental music, who, by definition, don’t ‘sing’ about anything.
October 1, 2012 at 9:07 am
JK
My last was responding to Bolithio,
October 1, 2012 at 12:46 pm
bolithio
OK well hopefully Im not “being a dick”. No offense Suzy, or anyone else, just talking about music, one of my favorite topics…
JK, your right, Chet being one of them. However I bet the non-lyrical artist is a short list for most people.
October 1, 2012 at 6:09 pm
Narration
suzy. That was quite nice to find and read, thank you. And the shoes are wonderful. I wonder, did you find they needed any little extra ventilation, maybe with nice eyelets installed with quiet care and labor?? No need to answer, as this is just from one of those moments of a wayward mind
I don’t know if I got every tidbit of that story, but enough, and yes, part of it was on Ernie’s blog. I went fishing again and came up with all kinds of things just now; most recent some Athabascan Indians one may have otherwise heard of. And some things of other leavings of place, not so long ago.
You have a powerful and creative mind, suzy, enough of one surely, I’m really glad to hear you have projects in portent, whichever way a given one goes. That’s what we do with itch and latent abilities and moments we get to which begin particular sight: turn up seeing something to do with them, each next.
I wish you very well on this, and assure there are many, many paths a person can come to and inhabit in life, having gone a few so far. In fact, it was somewhere around your age that I came from far and a thought about it to spend another near year in Humboldt, in a kind of Steinbeck existence living under an edge-of-Trinidad gift shop, a fine redwood clearing out my glass, and a run down through the woods to the sea most mornings, the warmer clime since I grew up both an enjoyment and a warning, the fog still dominating enough, and other water from the skies so far.
I went to a film with real rewards last night, before finding your missive, and think you’d like it: Looper. Be sure not to read anything about it before you see it, for best time. It’s strong and unusual writing that works, and for me was evidence as seen a time or two before that films can be really effective art in our time. There’s care of persons and imagination and all things coming next in it that you won’t know until the final moments. I want to say the journey is more than adequately unexpected at many turns that I think this will appeal to you, perhaps especially, and am trying to avoid any collision with clichés in saying so, you’ll appreciate. Anyway, I did like it.
I also thought; something of a year ago I was helping someone quite elder, who was of old California, southwest, even eastern family, but not one with a Lorne Greene Bonanza father in it at any point. This was in the writing of a movie, what portended to be a serious one and useful one.
This guy had enough real connections, access to money though I grew to understand the probably intricate story of that, and so forth. It all turned sour, because he really couldn’t escape the history he wanted to imagine in, and that’s the nicest I could say about that situation. But it could have been a good idea, the film actually; and I felt last night quite clearly how much better an idea it was that this Looper actually got made. Just that, and one of those feelings of the larger world again opening, on it. Being involved with films not my thing to do, truly; actually it had mostly happened out of trying to be kind; and the conclusion devolved around making it clear about that no. If it is a useful tale.
I’m also really glad that you got that rooms story quite well enough, and must say I was impressed how you did, in its essentials. As well as grateful our conversation brought it up: what happened there is definitely a novel idea. A much awaited turning point in something that simmers, actually. Maybe you’ll find some flavours that cook up someday. This was another reason to feel happy.
Did I find out how the shoe story ends? Well, ends. I am not sure that’s the appropriate point of it
. There was a kind of conclusion with the guy arguing the second time in the headlights. the wise woman absconding. I think the thing knitted more on the indication of the two persons really involved with the shoes, who with later re-viewing of first-felt distinctions, in some wise (different wise) apparently did some becoming of friends.
Appreciation, suzy. This has been a good moment. You can look to find there are many persons you’ve given chances to recognize things they’ve liked. That’s what you’ll make even more of, and like what you see. One would be confident of that
October 2, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Narration
Just wanted to throw in, before this fades away, one of those points of completion you were right to see and go for, suzy, which I found I was reticent to say and indeed had walked around in the above writing yesterday evening.
The little mention of the year back in Humboldt thus missed a key phrase, which would have said that I did this before going off for a life that turned into twenty years in Europe. There were a lot of notions in that more complete idea, such as the value of lives in this original home of mine, which I wanted to remember and see if still were there — they were, and have ever their rather unique flavor, which probably equally needs getting away to see, and better appreciate.
Around all of this, suzy, a big area of perceptions, and I am not going to be able to write them ‘short’ any better today, that’s sure. Lots of attributions for ‘wrote you a long letter because I didn’t have to write you a short one’, from an earlier Europe, you may know.
No long letter here either, but maybe a couple of points. It’s not necessary to go to Europe, and if one did, I would very much suggest it be to live somewhere for a time, rather than make any quick travel. That way, and by reading a lot of context regularly, as actually people do there for themselves, you have a chance to get to know them, and some things.
You can do this kind of process anywhere, though; I’ve done it in the wide lands people think are empty, but of persons or complex beauty definitely not, as Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota — or Eastern Oregon, for that matter. Someone who has done some of that and written often excellently is Barbara Kingsolver. She knits many of our cultures, usually in a pretty intriguing way. Maybe Animal Dreams to start with, or The Bean Trees and its own completion, Pigs in Heaven. I think an artist might find appeal in some of her work, which is definitely collage educated, as I heard someone put it recently. What a nice term.
I think the other thing I felt to say about Europe was in regard to some of the movements and individual contributors who are important to you. I guess I might suggest that most of these come out of quite constrained and often otherwise violent times. They made these flashpoints, and stuck to them for times, and in that way also constructed their freedom from the disasters. What they did has many uses, and many things to admire. I just think it’s pretty healthful as well as inspiring to see the contexts as best can be done. Then you can anticipate, and understand much better, how a Sartre, for example, could need and want to go back to some verities of his Jewish background, when he reached a certain age. I would see that as gaining a much sounder relation for his ideas, as well as his person, in a broad and long development that constructed all the reaches of its culture.
To mention one of those specifically that I’ve liked since meeting it, there’s a retelling of a Kabbalist picture in Chaim Potok’s Book of Lights, which describes the creation as having an error in it. God apparently was putting aside whatever there was to make room for the Creation, and the jars that contained it cracked, spilling good out into the universe or world so that it was mixed with any amount of bad things everywhere. Then it becomes the work of the mensch, the decent person, to recognize the fragments wherever they may turn up, dust them off, and restore them for what they can do.
It’s a pretty good picture to come out of the wild, mythic side of a religion, seemed to me; and anyway, I personally enjoy it. If you want to read a very good novel of Potok’s about life for an artist, may I suggest ‘The Gift of Asher Lev’ – which contains a lot of Europe also. Not to be confused with a much earlier ‘My Name is Asher Lev’, which is about a childhood.
Well, I am well off track, or on it, suzy. These postings often confuse me as to which, for all the imagination and connection that turns up behind them. As you noted, this happens when there is someone listening who will likely appreciate. People should get to know more about this, and you may see by now that I am kind of orientated on that notion, and liking the way our conversations have contributed.
Found objects, indeed.
October 2, 2012 at 10:32 pm
JK
@Narration. No offense, but those seem like PM’s that you should send directly to Suzy, instead of posting on a public blog.
October 3, 2012 at 10:59 am
Narration
JK, no offense taken, surely.
These are actually topics we’ve been going around with a number of discussions, mainly at Heraldo. For myself and some others, the issues of artist’s ways, politics, and the developing future are, as someone here might have put it, a bit intertwingled. I’m unabashed to be pretty interested there.
I didn’t think there was a PM ability — it seems to be possible for WordPress, but didn’t find any idea it was installed here. Probably due to the heat or other temperatures some discussions rise to in moments, would imagine, though it could have its uses, and I think there’s a blocking ability.
And yes, ancient as I may be, I had to notice I was feeling a little sad to potentially be losing a particular conversation, sauce with the sparkles. You always want to pass along a few things then, I think; was ever so, and especially where you may feel it’s quite deserved, in fair exchange.
Cheers, JK
October 3, 2012 at 3:37 pm
suzy blah blah
the issues of artist’s ways, politics, and the developing future are, as someone here might have put it, a bit intertwingled.
-unfortunately the readers here are just as unlikely to be open to some of the more creative solutions we offer as those at HH were. Over there we saw how stuffy their views on the topic are when they largely ignored the videos and open discussion on McKenna’s take on the Mayan’s higher consciousness and advanced astronomy and how their consciousness by way of using psilocybin mushrooms advanced far beyond our own, etc. (just some superstitious savages). Or how closed down they are to trying to understand Dali’s ingenious views concerning the interweaving of politics, physics, anti-matter, space travel, black holes,. etc., and how their correctly measured combinations and ratios of application can show a clear pathway to combining performance art, advanced physics, street theater, and the higher emotions, etc. as the most expedient way to proceed in extracting ourselves from the labyrinth that is modern culture with all it’s biases, hatred, etc., etc. that we posted for them to contemplate. (just some crazy artist ).
You can lead a hoss to water but i’m afraid most of them are just too content to sit on their fat asses drinking beer and laughing along to perverted country songs to want to learn any more subtle and creative viewpoints that come from the arts intertwingling with the sciences and from metaphysics building a solid foundation for the operation of higher mathematics. For instance, the concept that McKenna explained on the essence of the tangential point between zero and infinity… Stuff that is extremely pertinent to our times! But, you know how it is, suzy can’t go on about it anymore because it’s interrupting the intense discussion going on here about, uh, “the modern sounds of country”. LOL!
We believe… that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts.
Alfred Jarry
October 3, 2012 at 10:53 pm
Narration
Ok, rattlemouse. I read into your sources this afternoon, and have some thoughts.
Until then, here’s a non-shoe you might like (I look into architecture sometimes, always relaxes me of the worldly things…)
http://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2010/05/dzn_The-Elbphilharmonie-by-Herzog-de-Meuron-1.jpg
October 4, 2012 at 10:57 pm
Unk John
I had to take a break. I guess I was a bit confused and maybe even hurt by Suzy’s attack. All I did was say that I liked a certain album by Ray Charles and that I really respect the abilities of Chet Atkins on the guitar and the next thing I know, I am a non-thinking, lover of lying, cheating, hillbilly, good ol’ boys. I don’t even like most of the country music that’s out there and I had no idea that Chet Atkins was an a**hole. Maybe Suzy can make it completely clear as to what she knows that could verify said proposition.
I never disagreed with Suzy on her assessment of that song. It’s not something I can listen to comfortably.
I was completely resigned to forgetting the whole thing and then the conversation between Suzy and Narrative got hot and heavy and it occurred to me that they were discussing something from some other place. When she mentioned Terence Mckenna (at least I assume she meant Terence) my interest was heightened. I was saddened when he died, and I really enjoyed his interactions with Sheldrake and Abraham.
Anyway, I’ve vented and I feel like another battle.
October 5, 2012 at 12:16 am
suzy blah blah
-unk john, yes it was Terrance McKenna, in a discussion on Eric’s other blog and it spanned a couple of threads which i kept hijacking (guilty) one in which i posted a McKenna video. As i remember it was a discussion among other things about the tangential point between zero and infinity and how that relates to a logarithmic curve. Basically but you have to read it in context to really understand what i was getting at. The lineage of it. McKenna looked at chaos as the prerequisite for creativity or something and that’s what spurred some ideas about logarithmicallity and infinititude etc. but it was much more than that. We got into the meaning of speaking in the third person as well. I think i remember it starting off on a tangent from the video on black holes that Eric posted over there. And from McKenna’s interpretation of black holes it went to anti-matter’s relation to matter or something like that, and Dali’s theory on politic’s relation to mathematics’s and mathematics relation to music and art and so forth. –suzy couldn’t find the video but i found this one for you. It’s kewl. I had to turn the sound off at about 30seconds though because McKenna sounds like Donald Duck, LOL! like he’s on nitrous or something, but if you turn off the audio it has some nice stop action moving pictures of mushrooms and space and stuff like that to battle with.
October 5, 2012 at 12:21 am
suzy blah blah
-whoooops, i forgot to post it, duh
October 5, 2012 at 9:31 pm
Unk John
His thoughts on Chaos probably are in tune with Ralph Abraham’s. They believe (and I have no way of disagreeing) that there is evidence that in pre-history most, if not all cultures, were matriarchal. Their most important deities were goddesses, not gods.
They find that in such cultures, chaos was considered the normal state of the universe and order was an anomaly. I am not prepared to speak as an authority, but I have found this to be very interesting, and it is my intent to pursue it.
October 6, 2012 at 6:49 am
Erasmus
Patriarchal cultures (i.e., those we know anything about) have no trouble worshipping goddesses, even to the detriment of gods.
October 6, 2012 at 7:23 am
Mitch
Narration,
I’m glad you mention the kabalistic and, later, Hasidic dogma of the shattering of the vessels. The idea that the creation is fucked up and needs to be put back together by conscious effort has always seemed to me to be far closer to reality than the idea that there’s some perfect omnipotent God out there who just happens to let awful things happen so we can have free will.
Elie Wiesel’s many collections of Hasidic tales are among the most personally meaningful books I’ve ever read. But my takeaway is not particularly mystical, which probably won’t surprise anyone. My takeaway is that things are best viewed as fucked up, and that we need to exert conscious effort to heal things.
October 6, 2012 at 12:50 pm
suzy blah blah
-there are a lot of people among us who see the world as being “fucked up”. This comes from their not feeling one with nature. They don’t realize that they are God, eg, one with the universe. They feel separate from it, alienated from it, and so therefore they go running around trying to “heal” things. They become hostile against what they perceive as a “fucked up world”, and they try to make things submit to their will. They are a real problem.
October 6, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Bolithio
I was saddened when he died, and I really enjoyed his interactions with Sheldrake and Abraham.
Me too. Food of the Gods was an interesting read. Still, there is something he seems to be missing, that is the reliance on substances to pursue higher thinking. Shamans reserved these “tools” for special occasions, not regular use. Shouldn’t it be more of an awakening experience, that allows you to go there in normal (sober) life? I have to wonder about Terrence’s demise (brain cancer) and how regularly smoking synthesized DMT factored into it.
October 6, 2012 at 2:33 pm
Mitch
“there are a lot of people among us who see the world as being “fucked up”. This comes from their not feeling one with nature. They don’t realize that they are God, eg, one with the universe. They feel separate from it, alienated from it, and so therefore they go running around trying to “heal” things. They become hostile against what they perceive as a “fucked up world”, and they try to make things submit to their will. They are a real problem.”
This is probably the best statement of blah’s philosophy I’ve yet seen.
Aside from the consistent murder of large populations by governments and others, and the consistent bullying of the weak by the strong, and a few other things that I won’t bother to try to remember, you are exactly right, blah. The world is perfect. Those of us that think it’s fucked up are alienated, and therefore we are the problem.
Thanks, as always, for your helpful commentary.
October 6, 2012 at 2:40 pm
moviedad
Chet Atkins is a god!
October 6, 2012 at 4:17 pm
suzy blah blah
-don’t put words in my mouth Mitch. Suzy never said the world was “perfect” -duh. What i’m saying is that your hope to change the world is a childish illusion, if you want to change something, change yourself.
October 6, 2012 at 4:19 pm
suzy blah blah
Chet Atkins is a god!
-sad but true
October 6, 2012 at 7:13 pm
Mitch
suzy,
You’re right, you didn’t say “perfect.” But I can’t follow how my perception of the world as being fucked up comes from not being one with nature. I don’t even understand what that might mean.
In any event, for those who missed Sally’s gift from an earlier conversation, here’s an important video on the state of things:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdn3O6aaMNc
October 7, 2012 at 7:53 am
Unk John
Erasmus,
I agree. Patriarchal societies do that. What they (R. Abraham, et al) are talking about, however, is deeper.
The most important (strongest) deities in most cultures over the last 5 to 6 thousand have been masculine. Before that, they believe the most important were feminine.
What I find interesting in their thoughts is that they think that the matriarchal societies were based in cooperation and the patriarchal became competitive. The previous cultures had “chaos”, while the patriarchs strove for “order.” Keep in mind that the definitions of those two words may not be exactly the same now as they were to the people then.
I brought this up mainly because of Suzy’s statement somewhere above about Mckenna and creativity coming from chaos. As I said, I claim no authority on this topic, but I find it interesting enough to look more deeply.
BTW, Suzy, I always thought that Mckenna’s voice sounded somewhat like Truman Capote. I didn’t care for either.
October 7, 2012 at 8:23 am
Erasmus
You write “the matriarchal societies” as if their existence were an established fact. That is not the case, though the paucity of written documents from the earliest human societies does provide speculation plenty of room.—– Steven Goldberg wrote a book a couple of decades ago entitled ‘The Inevitabilty of Patriarchy’, and I found it pretty convincing.—– I agree with you on the subject of male vs. female deities, and although I was raised as a Protestant I have to concede that Catholics were wise to elevate the Virgin Mary to quasi-divine status.
October 7, 2012 at 10:14 am
Unk John
“You write “the matriarchal societies” as if their existence were an established fact.”
Like you, I am in no position to make such a claim. All I can do is repeat what their research tells them (Abraham, Mckenna, Sheldrake, and others). They say that the archaeological record lends credence to them. They also admit to much speculation as by definition pre-history has no written verification.
I am not familiar with Goldberg’s book, but it might be interesting to read it while I ponder the other side. I don’t think that I might necessarily disagree that patriarchy is/was inevitable, but even if I do, I might still see a reversal in the future.
October 7, 2012 at 11:46 am
suzy blah blah
-Mitch, it’s difficult to have a discussion with someone when you just cherry pick a phrase out of my posts to rag on. In context, what suzy said was, “They become hostile against what they perceive as a “fucked up world”, and they try to make things submit to their will“. Listen to the
whole idea not just a fragment of it that strikes you as being not right. If you take the whole, see it in it’s wholeness, then the meaning is different. And, if you feel at one with nature then you don’t do damage to your Self. The important point that you ignored is that they try to “heal” or fix the world from their position of separateness. An elitist separation indeed. And that is what i said was the problem. History shows us all the destruction done over the centuries in the name of fixing things up and making the world a better place by warring against the “other”.
So what i’m saying is that we’re all one, and that those who are running around trying to change things are bullies, pushing things around and trying to make them submit to their own will, and that they are a problem. But if they realized their oneness with the world, not intellectually but experientially, they wouldn’t need to do that.
When i saw that you didn’t get it, i simplified if for you even more, realizing that maybe you can’t grasp the “oneness” idea. So suzy made it real easy for you by eliminating the more esoteric meaning and cutting out the difficulties you have with understanding oneness and i paired the concept down to simply saying that their, “hope to change the world is a childish illusion”. I can accept that you disagree, but don’t tell me that you can’t understand that.
btw, that song is a good illustration of what i mean by childish.
-
@ unk john, -Gaia is a revival of the “Earth-goddess” found in many ancient pagan religions.
October 8, 2012 at 5:16 pm
Narration
It’ll have to remain that it was for my own reasons to have held back here, after promising something. The other play here has been entertaining, though, truly.
suzy, it was just two things I had in mind. The main one was that influence is of such importance as a path. That is just how I see it, of course, and the poem at end has the thought midway. I decided to include this stanza of something longer (and not quite so old as the last one) for its contexts and continuities. The whole thing had more, you’d expect.
The other thought relates to sources. I liked learning about Alfred Jarry, a true absurdist I think, in the sense of absolute revolt against a European absolutism of concepts. McKenna, well, though I am sure some can hear resonances they may like. I think it was actually Jarry who made the statement about tangentiality, though McKenna may have taken it up. No problem on hearing the voice on the video here.
Maybe the way to mention it is to say that chaos and catastrophe theory were early runners to what has become quite richer and important. This is the study of complex adaptive systems. I actually ran into this before it had a name, doing an investigation of animal populations, and taking it a little farther than the classic method, but let’s not go there.
The key point was coming out of this building which included big computers of the time, where I’d spent the last week playing hookey from my job (encouraged) to create that paper. I’d run straight into the fact we were about to realize, that at the high point of abilities in simulation, we understood all we did, and it was not adequate or even fit: as the Club of Rome had publicized earlier, it lead to dead ends.
I walked into the parking lot, deliberately late to miss the Friday traffic for the drive to the actress girlfriend in Napa, so it would be evening and pleasant, but it was much more pleasant just to stand a moment on that south bay terrain, the sun cutting off early behind the Pacific hills, the sea wind blowing the great trees so that their leaves sparked, a disordered ensemble of individuals, waving in the arms of others. I saw then in a vision what the experiment had been teaching me, how there was something much beyond what we were doing, because nature, rather than collapsing, indeed lived.
If I really had wanted to be a researcher, I would have turned a direction there, but I turned as deliberately another. I can say that the conundrum has answers, and these are patiently becoming clear. I could thus recommend the real science of your own generation, suzy, for insights. It’s useful to study what the Modernist theories led to for artists who tried them to break from classicist thinking, but the real principle is to use what you have in the now. At least so I think, and may observe, while working pretty hard to practice.
Here’s that old poem fragment, and I apologize for other fragmentation, entirely deliberate, as what I had to think about the last week was otherwise demanding.
Influence: that’s where the skid marks are, as I mentioned to Ursula Le Guin. She said she liked what the whole thing was, having it.
–
For the other, and those with…
I’m not sure about these tropical dreams
At least mine came from my father’s, probably,
his life, and then from what I caught on my own time
At least mine have real water, I’m swimming in it
Deep, and the green walls are tall and steep
Rising out of the sea as they really do
Though how I knew that, I do not know
But my friend, he paints them out of a dry place.
I lived in that desert, for what turned out to be a long time
One day found that he had painted what was really there
In oasis moments between afternoons and the thunder
I thought he did it for his family, for his friends,
And liked that, though later it became not so clear
Now how much it was about friends, at all
I said painting was meditation, that’s close to love
But love is an acquired taste
You can also enjoy it without quite knowing what you have
Younger persons often think they know which way is best
It’s good that there is always something to be learned
You can start with anger, feared like storms,
Like them, to be ridden through
Then you’re there, and the day is brighter
Detail in crystal greys, the feeling is well
Such a thing, done by oneself
Can become a way to look
Out of, towards another, when you will
By far the more difficult is trust
Knowing why you would want to, a thing
Nature not exactly the help here, teaching denial
often enough, if truth be told
Yet in its reflection, the place
Where the reason one can see, you notice,
also can be shared.
Perhaps offered is in the nature of the middle way, between two hands,
Weighed softly through the fingers, released
After all, those things discovered in influence
Seem more than could possibly be made
Slip up kind, quiet, gentled,
become the most generous of friends
And now, my friend, he’s laid in a strange calf,
It’s the first thing you notice in the painting
Just as it is with the little girl,
But she’s strange too, you love her not as others
She is just there, some people are from so small
My soldier brother stood like that, a real dancer’s step
And know that dancers have that animal distance
They live in things we can never be certain
They are not tame
and it is not beauty
It is much more than that
And it is something sure, for being always close to loss
Her sister is wind itself, tears like rain
She might cry a lot, and then be very happy
Be liked, very well
But maybe this is what it is about my friend
Sureness and loss
where a dancer just knows to move
And smile at other times
His fingers can do this, chalk in hand
When he will see so with the rest
It’s just likely he’ll become
In the way that things are when they ‘re fine
The water will always be,
It gets deeper
and subtle as before storm, arriving with desert dark
Bright colors, are sometimes become silvered clouds of only light
The night is crossing rivers
Home where one then goes
all of the growing is there.
— From For Two Friends, Copyright 1988
October 8, 2012 at 10:24 pm
suzy blah blah
-wow Narration, thats really really cewl.
October 9, 2012 at 5:39 am
johnnkirk
Well, we can’t say what the specific details of the cultures were, but we know that both pre-Greek invaded Crete, and pre-Roman invaded England had Matriarchs ruling them (or parts of them).
October 9, 2012 at 10:59 am
Narration
suzy, in a hurry again, so just want to say that this was very nice last night to find and hear. Smile returned to you.
The one point that I left out, which you probably got,is that for me at least art is the place of making those influences, any kinds of them. So there is a lot of space, and none of it where there’s the burden of telling something.
I found myself this morning considering how much it means to me, a sense being regained here of the rightness and joy in flexing language…
Take care.
October 9, 2012 at 11:00 am
Narration
@johnnkirk, I had thought to bring up the story of Boadica, and what she almost accomplished, but the accepted history seems to make her story not quite that of originating matriarchs. Quite interesting though.
October 9, 2012 at 12:31 pm
suzy blah blah
art is the place of making those influences
-suzy agrees if the influence is natural. But if the influence is consciously intended –it’s not art. Joyce lays out the idea in Portrait:
https://www.msu.edu/~corcora5/essays/joycestheory.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.abuildingroam.com/2010/07/examining-james-joycestephen-dedalus.html
October 9, 2012 at 5:58 pm
Narration
Hmm. Hmm. First thinking, you show good range, suzy. And that I liked the chance to encounter what you raised up.
Many other thoughts. Mainly, though, I want to stick with where I entered, which derives of a gentled mode, though not perhaps a less precise one.
You know, the best reckoning for art that I ever read came in a small book by Frank Kermode, Forms of Attention. I found it of a Saturday moment, languishing in a bookstore in Britain, and it was sufficiently complicated that when I looked into it again years later, it seemed almost an entirely different work. Same wonderful writing and meanings, though; Kermode was a very real star in some firmament.
HIs essential thesis is that what we recognize as art enough to put it in a canon (that was a big argument you are probably familiar with at the time), can be recognized by the great dimensional ranges of content actually present in it. Beyond what i would consider their primary effect, these allow the work to keep being rediscovered across eras, hence the canon part of things, less interesting for sure.
Here’s a review at random now, but which seems to catch more of the flavor I found than many.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/06/25/specials/kermode-forms.html?_r=1
I read your sources, thanks. I think I prefer my eased-in-from-the-Asian ways of it, as in the poem, if pretty intentionally simpled there, at the time.
I think of conversations I used to have with post-revolutionary Chinese, as we tried to arrange across long phone distances and in central European places person-to-person. Things I knew from upbringing, and from life which had been in their area were surprisingly resisted; this coming of post-colonial attitudes, even as real friendships were being formed.
And once trust was there, I used to get some of the most awakening statements out of some of them, in moments we were dealing with something tough. Somehow in just one sentence the universe at least of our concerns could be entirely present, all ten troubles and influences of it.
I came to realize this was real Chinese thinking, coming out even in English, again when trusted; where that full universe of the possible was always present, always to be walked through as the forest of the educated person. This I could very much appreciate, as well as understand, for it is my forest also, and not so unlike the Humboldt one either, across these pages.
Rather than the chop and metallic sharpening of Irish-puritanical or myth-authority speaking, it is in such senses of locations where I think the complexity, and thus the authenticity we recognize as art well shows.
I think you are aware in what frames I was mentioning this to you, and in what senses of sharing the goods, towards things we each I think can do.
The original point was, indeed, that this is better than telling
And if everyone has their moments of many things, properly in this life…
October 9, 2012 at 6:26 pm
suzy blah blah
-well then we’ll agree to disagree.
October 9, 2012 at 9:17 pm
Narration
Well, probably I owe you an apology.
I don’t think we’re actually very far apart on this, suzy, and I did just instinctively like how you said for yourself.
As often, and that’s a good place to walk from this, for an evening.
Best.
October 9, 2012 at 11:51 pm
suzy blah blah
- i can’t really accept an apology if i don’t know what it’s for, Narr. But, no prob, and if we’re “not that far apart on this”, suzy’s assuming that you mean, by “this”, Joyce’s definition, then let me kiss you goodnight, although you sleep, with a little ditty from one of my faves –you did bring up the instincts, you know.
“nothing beautiful is indispensable to life. [...] Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and the needs of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor weak nature. The most useful place in the house is the lavatory.”
Theophile Gautier
October 10, 2012 at 8:50 am
Narration
How can I dispute this
— and also as it is of the Zen of suzy, not to say tending towards a feminine way whoever mentions it. Even though it switched a little for me, read more accurately a second time. I am pretty sure I need new glasses, but then where would I fish up fresh insights??
Ok. What I was apologizing for, a myriad no doubt, but it seems this morning it was mainly for forgetting for a moment how each person, and especially each artist if they are anything separate, has their own strong ways of finding and re-finding freedom.
The local animals are restless this morning, obscuring my ocean, so no long trains of thought. On Joyce, I saw from the beginning where there is a connection there. For me, it got obscured when I paid too much attention to specifics of his approach and language, of a time and place, but I understand very well what he was getting at, and appreciate an amount of it. So let’s call that a catholic (definitely small c) agreement, how’s that?
cath·o·lic/ˈkaTH(ə)lik/
Adjective:
(esp. of a person’s tastes) Including a wide variety of things; all-embracing.
Just being sure… And not quite signing up for the all-embracing, who could, but always on the lookout for where there’s the enjoyment of realizing friends.
p.s. I slept well; not being aware of a reason
October 10, 2012 at 3:11 pm
suzy blah blah
appreciate an amount of it
- .that makes no sense. The distinction is between “proper art” and “improper art”. Either you agree with it or you disagree. And it is simply this, in his terms: Proper art = static — Improper art = kinetic.
There is no embracing both static and kinetic as proper art within this definition. You either agree or disagree. Or you can’t decide. Which is it?
October 10, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Narration
suzy, what I can’t agree with is the binary language of a century ago — nor with the framework of its concepts.
It gives me a toothache, not to speak of what it did to Europe, in my family and in what I grew to recognize over long time in living there.
This doesn’t mean that there isn’t common ground to be found, that we can’t appreciate what a Cartesian of thought was reaching for. That’s where the word appreciation comes in, and the tact of assuring a place for it.
October 10, 2012 at 6:38 pm
suzy blah blah
-okay, then let’s hear what you think is the difference between proper and improper art, in your framework. In your language.
October 10, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Narration
I don’t divide that way, suzy, proper and improper. Though I know the desire not to be caught in traps of mammon, romnoids, gallery worlds, critical circles, and so forth, even more than you may imagine.
The word that keeps coming up in trying to say something with you is honesty.
There are kinds of honesty, in being within the world that you want to express, with the persons and their things there especially. The sense of this honesty in presence is the link for me with what Dadelus/Joyce wanted to say. There isn’t anything necessarily static about it, though I reckon his use of this distinction from distraction and noise.
Don’t you feel that discussing this way runs out, quickly? I do.
I think what each of you and I needs is to make, to be busy with that. Eyelets on a shoe as much as that pleases of a moment, and then other things. Do, and further will appear; do, and darkness there may be in the shatterings of a time become the warmth of a peaceful workshop, and then the visiting who will be friends.
I had to turn a lamp on there; maybe you see that. There’s still tact operating at a high rate, and shadows that need to be left behind, ever with a sense of time.
October 10, 2012 at 8:25 pm
suzy blah blah
I don’t divide that way, suzy, proper and improper.
- then i have nothing more to do with you.
October 10, 2012 at 10:24 pm
johnnkirk
Suzy…. prop·er adjective \ˈprä-pər\
Characterized by appropriateness or suitability; fitting: the proper knife for cutting bread; not a proper moment for a joke.
Unless you’re using some alternate meaning of the word, it would completely depend on the setting and the observers. You seem to want to judge things that you personally dislike as being universally “improper”, irregardless of perspective.
You refuse to acknowledge that others can legitimately find beauty & meaning in things you find distasteful. You, I guess, feel that your perspective is “truth” & people who don’t accept that are damaged in some way. Whether you understand it, or not, this shows an extreme lack of empathy.
Everybody is influenced by their own perspective, but most of us understand that everyone else has their own. They might not be as well organized, or have as much rational input, but they are “valid” and “proper” to them.
October 11, 2012 at 12:42 am
suzy blah blah
You seem to want to judge things that you personally dislike as being universally “improper”, irregardless of perspective.
-no, its not things that i dislike, i dislike a lot of what i’m calling proper art, i also like a lot of art that i’m calling improper. It’s art that is “kinetic”, as defined by Joyce, that i think is improper, not universally, but in my opinion.
You refuse to acknowledge that others can legitimately find beauty & meaning in things you find distasteful.
- no. I fully acknowledge that Narration can legitimately find beauty & meaning in things i find distasteful. But if one sees no distinction between proper and improper art, then there is no proper and improper art. It’s all the same to that person. Some may be meaningful, some may be beautiful, but it’s just art. I can’t relate to that at all. Just my personal opinion John.
You, I guess, feel that your perspective is “truth” & people who don’t accept that are damaged in some way.
- specifically, we were talking about my perspective on what is proper and improper art. It’s not the “truth” it’s my opinion. I don’t think people who disagree with it are damaged. We disagree, that’s all.
October 11, 2012 at 2:11 am
johnnkirk
Oh. That’s different. There are a lot of ways art CAN be improper, inappropriate, or just so poorly conceived as to not qualify as art. Granted, that’s through my perspective, but, valid nonetheless.
If you don’t judge art on any standards, you aren’t really appreciating it. It might be arrogant to qualify art, but not doing so is kind of dismissing it.
Sorry, it sounded like you wanted him to qualify art in general.
October 11, 2012 at 10:09 am
Narration
Interesting discussion. I have a thought to walk around the swingeing (“to punish with blows”) ‘proper and improper’, and look at the Joycean moment with the word ‘kinetic’.
I think the thing I fundamentally reject in this is an idea which is really reaching straight back to classicism, that the artist has to clock-stop mundane reality and contemplate what s/he has rescued from it. No doubt popular when there were considered closely to be only the hoi oligoi (elite), and the hoi polloi.
When you can read it, suzy, I offered you above a closely thought alternative, in the concept of special degrees of honesty as a measure. I didn’t invent this idea for myself, but it attached, especially as from a pretty young age I’ve had a particularly strong recognition and rejection of what can be ‘static’.
It works a lot better for me to consider the results of such honesty in what someone does or has done, in appreciating its value, in choosing about its influence.
If you really need to concern about rejecting, dishonesty is probably just as good a measure. Mostly but not always, rejecting feels a waste of time; I’d rather be attending to what we can ‘use’, in an endangering time especially, but always, really. We need things we can make further from, I guess I’d always enjoy to feel.
Maybe you see that my instinct is indeed to move from the pejorative to more nuanced attention. Maybe too, you don’t mean proper/improper with quite the degree of shadow I have consistent instinct to find in it.
Not that shadows can’t be very fine things, either, in light and life; the places for gentle things to develop. But then these are not the shadows of dividing judgement, are they….
October 11, 2012 at 10:28 am
Narration
Another, kind of sly thought entered, a little after. About dogs, mainly.
I can sometimes be kind of surprised by what I might say or write; after long experience of it, this seems pretty much of a good thing, and that one would not be the only person to recognize so.
Dogs do this in spades, at least some I know pretty well. You understand them a lot better if you see they kind of live in movements between ‘jags’ — big enthusiasms for affection or for fight, for deep, releasing rest or food and movement.
Anyway, I will contemplate my inner dog, at least for a moment, and give it a pat.
Speaking for a lot of thing, ones we share around
October 12, 2012 at 12:16 pm
Narration
With time only for the first words, not so much for any redoing, a moment’s coda.
Prosaic
The storm front has passed now, as far as you can get south of Lala land,
The desert returns, washed; the clouds of its conditioning higher for a day
The chill on the edge this country’s best of refreshing
My Russian pal, who owns this house many room in, has brought a friend
The children have given up their nightly hip-hop, so that dreams may be better
And glancing wryly in the morning at this physicality most think fifteen years younger,
I realize have spent more time than I thought, in moments visiting a forest flower
Attracted by what, in a mixture always present of sweetness and poisons,
Indeed malevolence you can never miss, woven through some of the best
Most likely this is poison oak, for sure, yet not like much around it
In that distinction and others, something worthwhile for the conversation
Intelligence and always surges for freedom, those movements reckoned and respected
With evidence of some length in practice, not only in collage degrees
I think about it from my position of certain kinds of poverty,
The loss of everything external of a life, for having tried one last time
To bring any direct help to what instead decided it needed to be happening
The imprisonment where I can touch directly so little of what I know,
Where the opportunity is to bring to the thinking that they can have none of it
Where direct falls often to an even more pervasive reach of honesty
Honesty, I think that has been the center of the conversation
Especially as there have been so many efforts to deviate around this
Little thunderclaps of explosion, when we get too close
With something I understand probably too well, and not,
Insistence on agreement
It could be a practice or a principle, but agreement
Where respect, interest, actual appreciation are blanked from sight
Yet those are the things one needs to learn to reckon with others
In the great lands we persons live,
so many cultures of sight and experience,
and of time
That it would only reduce what shares, to think of any as agreement
Are we close, yet, to understanding better what is a friend?
Someone who can’t agree, yet answers, and speaks
Lots closer
Lots of possible degree, each individual
Much more freedom for having such relation
Whatever each one is, is ever growing to be
So, age in a moment of a morning, but not only
The fact of being able to speak in new recognitions
This will help in the other ways words want to travel, and paint
Worth any of the time spent walking those woods, surely, and the boots for this
The forest flower is hardly the rose of another desert,
Rather, independent, capable, and of her own place, her places
But the man who grew to know the fox there, had learned an essential
The fox, always animal distinct, always prevaricated in otherwise simple speeches
Could be seen indeed the best friend of all, on a road
Giving the key to knowing others
Copyright 2012,
and with due regard to the desert author, his little prince,
who a rose like that. once introduced me to
October 13, 2012 at 1:09 pm
Sue Fysticated
Bob Newhart ( September 5, 1929-):
‘I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means ‘put down’.
October 14, 2012 at 12:57 pm
suzy blah blah
-suzy’s sorry, this is not sung by one of the great country music gods, but it is a good ol classic rockbilly doowap era song that can be appreciated by all, stop, it’s even kinda about fucking and unfucking, and if you notice, it has a nice moral to it too, you see … and this version comes even with a kind of coda at the end, about stealing and cheating and honesty, with a touch of advertising thrown in to move ya: