Zeitgeist Haiku

 

mark modernity

approaching and hovering

scrapers stretch upward

Stimulating Performances: Luciano Berio: Momenti, per nastro magnetico (1960)

An Easter Affirmation from Tasso

But now rise, rise out of the depths 
—may our speech emerge from the waves!
Let us look upwards, up towards the sky,
we will see the shore wonderfully adorned: 
the salt, drawn by the waves, nearly hardens
into white marble, and like deep-red stone
the beautiful coral glows in the air,
which formerly was soft grass underwater;
and among the shells, the hard pearl
shines white; and on the sandy waste
flames the gold, and like most precious gems
some stones are painted in many colors.
 
           --Torquato Tasso, Creation of the World, Day Five, 652-663

 

 

Click the cover image to view the Amazon description:

 

Stimulating Performances: Константин Ковальский - терменвокc 1960 USSR

Emanations 12 Update

I have the first of two (or maybe three) proof copies of Emanations 12 on my desk.  Very striking. Highbrow? Well, it certainly looks the part. I've had to reposition some content and there are many little jots and tittles that need attention, but things are moving forward. 

Why can't Johnny learn to argue? "Solipsedelic Giddy Up a Ding Dong: Brexit, continued", continued...

My Friday July 1, 2016 Highbrow post touched upon an interesting problem in contemporary discussion patterns: People don't know how to argue productively. Here (and HERE) is that post:

Solipsedelic Giddy Up a Ding Dong: Brexit, continued

In this matter of Brexit, I've observed that many people don't argue or debate, they fight. Rather than an informative conversation, people are locked in stubborn bickering. I have observed this in other discussions touching on topical subjects, and words like "insipid" and "solipsism" come to mind as I seek to understand why people are so angry. The intolerance is such that you might as well give up on a political discussion. People have their minds made up and that's it. People don't seem to want to compare their feelings as feelings. Feelings are treated like positions, and if they are not my positions, they are ridiculed and dismissed in a flurry of ad hominum invective. People don't want to analyze their own or others' levels of understanding. They don't want to learn why other people have the positions they do. People don't want to understand why others have differing views, they just want to label and condemn. Rather than seeing shades of grey, or cultivating a good sensitivity to irony, things are simply either "correct" or "incorrect."  Very tiresome. 

Remember the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." 

The phenomenon of strident, indignant and intolerant discourse continues, and it is of course evident across a broad spectrum of political and cultural subjects. Instead of discussing difficult subjects, people are quick to jam, yell, deploy anger and outrage, filibuster and censure. We read descriptions of universities cancelling controversial speakers; militant "protests" that shut down people holding "incorrect" views; activists in the academic community co-opting (necessary) traditional standards of collegiality and reforming those standards for political  purposes.  Alas, race and gender have become institutional control spaces and management tools. Education, journalism, film, television and music have become fields of social engineering, where political standards have been set by "corporate" experts. It is as if we are under the shepherd's crook of some dystopian "Nu-Academy" (compare, for example, That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis). Have the authoritarian cultural- and social-engineering theories of Hegel been instituted, moreover without any sort of constitutional, democratic or proper academic process and review?  It has just emerged--or perhaps we have been maneuvered into this state, by technocrats.

My novels (listed on the right of this page) address these issues in a variety of ways.  Please read them.

Tilting at windmills? One wonders.

Meanwhile, in the original post, my International Authors colleague Prof. Horace Jeffery Hodges posted a characteristically amusing comment (again, click HERE).  Humor is an effective palliative.  Also meanwhile, Emanations 12 is close to publication.  Watch this space.

Milton for Moderns by Terrance Lindall

Terrance Lindall has produced a new booklet outlining his extensive catalog of work inspired by and involving John Milton. As Terrance says below, the book can be printed and signed (contact him HERE). Click the cover image to view the on-line version of the booklet:

Terrance writes:

Here is a summary of what I have done so far. Of course many great scholars produce events such as Milton readings and upload papers to Academia and Wordpress, and cumulatively we carry forward Milton's legacy. This book can be printed and signed if anyone would like. Meanwhile, thank you my friends for your support! 

   Best, 

       Terrance Lindall

Theatrical Sanctum: a play in one image, now, variously, irregularly, advancing, crisis, suspension, false resolution, concluded.

The confluence of an odd bookshop, strange books and the confused epistemologies of packaged psychedelia (the tiresome laughtrack leads to a consideration of the writing, which isn't very clever)

A stimulating lineup of contributors--full of promise. And intriguing cover art--but would such a painting be appropriate hanging in one's home?

Vivian Darkbloom

Vivian Darkbloom (Marianne Stone) holding the shoulder of Clair Quilty (Peter Sellers). Dolores "Lolita" Haze (Sue Lyon) is on the right. Vivian Darkbloom is Clair Quilty’s partner in writing--and crime. After Quilty’s death, Vivian writes Quilty’s biography. “Vivian Darkbloom” is an anagram for “Vladimir Nabokov” (is it?).

 

A character named Vivian Darkbloom makes an appearance in my short story contribution to Wave IX : "The Nanopoetic Quest in Theory and Practice".   Please click HERE for further remarks.

Curb appeal?

Italia 1958, a futuristic car with Sputnik knockoff used by the Italian Communist Party during General Elections

Emanations 12 news forthcoming

by David Delruelle

  Watch this spot.

Thenceforth, I Entered a Jasmin-Scented Dream of the Future

Peter Hacker - Wittgenstein and his impact upon Anglophone philosophy ("The declining influence of his work today will be explained and the concomitant losses to philosophy will be rehearsed.")

 

Description: 

In this talk, the salient achievements of Wittgenstein’s two masterpieces, the Tractatus and the Investigations will be surveyed and their influences on Anglophone and European philosophy recounted. Wittgenstein dominated fifty years of 20th century philosophy, from the 1920s to the 1970s. The declining influence of his work today will be explained and the concomitant losses to philosophy will be rehearsed. 

Peter Hacker was Fellow in Philosophy at St John's College, Oxford from 1966 to 2006, where he is now an Emeritus Fellow. He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kent at Canterbury from 2013 to 2016. He was appointed to an Honorary Professorship at the UCL Institute of Neurology from 2019-2024. He is an Honorary Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford. He is author or co-author of 25 books, editor or co-editor of four books, and author of 175 papers. His main contributions to philosophy lie in his work on Wittgenstein, his writings (together with the great Australian neuroscientist Maxwell Bennett) on philosophy and neuroscience, and his tetralogy on human nature. His most recent book is Solving, Resolving, and Dissolving Philosophy Problems: Essays in Connective, Contrastive, and Contextual Analysis (2025). 

Who?

Geopolitics (the chess game begins at 4:08)

Impression and Abstraction

Paul Cezanne - Five Bathers, 1885-1887

Sorel Etrog - Study after Cezanne's Five Bathers, 1968

International Authors Editorial Board News

Jeffrey Falla and Jean-Paul L. Garnier have joined the International Authors editorial board.  Visit the International Authors website and click their names to view their projects.

Not "What can it mean?" Rather, "How does it mean?"

Yves Tanguy - Indefined Divisibility