A Warning To My Readers
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
—
—
The Drunkard
You drunken
tottering
bum
by Christ
in spite of all
your filth
and sordidness
I envy
you
It is the very face
of love
itself
abandoned
in that powerless
committal
Thanks for looking.
—
Thanks, reader:
Related On This Site:Appeasement Won’t Do-Via A Reader, ‘Michael Ignatieff Interview With Isaiah Berlin’
A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”…
Repost-Classical Liberalism Via Friesian.Com-‘Exchange with Tomaz Castello Branco on John Gray’
The radical and rationalist project, anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism: Repost-From Michael Totten At World Affairs: “Noam Chomsky: The Last Totalitarian”
Somewhere from the old aristocratic Russia softly speaks a keen mind in beautiful, strange English: Michael Dirda At The Washington Post Reviews ‘Nabokov in America’
How might this relate to the Heglian/post-Marxist project via ‘The End Of History’: Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’
Via Youtube-‘Week 2 Leo Strauss-The Three Waves Of Modernity’
A proposition: Deeply embedded principles, ingrained into habit and character in a single individual, are rarely enough to withstand the force of a mob. When you were thirteen, maybe you were invited to a party. Excited, you picked a loud, purple shirt from your brother’s closet. A girl who will be at the party said maybe she thinks you’re pretty cute. A faint purple glow suddenly appears around the edges of the shirt as you try it on.
In the steaming hothouse of a suburban basement later that night, two cool girls are seen turning away, snickering, while a pretty audible ‘nice shirt faggot’ erupts from a pack of skaters devouring a pizza.
Perhaps, after waking up the next morning, you slip ol’ purp back into your brother’s closet; the aura now gone as it disappears from view.
I look around and see high IQ individuals within institutions no less subject to group dynamics, intellectual fashions and passing fads. In fact, upon examination, I see similar stuff within myself.
From my perspective, collectivist action under liberal ideals (‘democracy,’ ‘equality’, ) has already consigned individual freedoms (speech, religion, conscience) to secondary importance. ‘Culture’ comes to depend upon a series of emergent moral causes. Supposedly these causes are ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ but they function more as ideas, actors, belief and group-dynamics do.
At least within groups where truth and constraining principles are embedded within the pursuit of power, do individual principles stand a chance. You’d be hard pressed to find a religious commandment or Church hierarchy free from human ignorance, hubris, sexual dynamics and self-interest.
Or a military hierarchy for that matter.
What I expect, but don’t exactly predict: An American cultural and political center will be philosophically closer to Great Britain and other European centers (more stasis, more grievance and more rigid hierarchies). An American politics will likely display a more open spoils-distribution system. Perhaps we’ll see an American ‘center’ with its own unique saving graces and destructive vices (more commercial, more ‘Puritan’ cum ‘Romantic’ etc).
The recent growth and success of the DSA is but one consequence of the experiments we’ve been running, and I don’t expect the conductors of these experiments to ‘scientifically’ examine the results anytime soon. Many liberal individualists will lock arms some of the time (around sinecures, established interests and core beliefs more often…such is humanity). Such individualists will often do so against elements of the radical Left.
Elements of the right will be more European and identity-based than before, with no shortage of ignorance, ass-covering and rule-enforcement. Politicians are no strangers to navigating group-dynamics. Sometimes you go along to get along. Sometimes individual courage and truth is subject to party membership. Sometimes genuine truth and creative possibility are subject to practical power.
Perhaps we’re living through a kind of ‘unwinding’, but also a period of massive technological changes and genuine progress.
I dunno.
Seattle’s got plenty of good photographers making photos better than this, but hey…thanks for looking.
—
Atlantis
‘…Should storms, as may well happen,
Drive you to anchor a week
In some old harbour-city
Of Ionia, then speak
With her witty scholars, men
Who have proved there cannot be
Such a place as Atlantis:
Learn their logic, but notice
How its subtlety betrays
Their enormous simple grief;
Thus they shall teach you the ways
To doubt that you may believe.‘
—
Re-Statement Of Romance
The night knows nothing of the chants of night.
It is what it is as I am what I am:
And in perceiving this I best perceive myself
And you. Only we two may interchange
Each in the other what each has to give.
Only we two are one, not you and night,
Nor night and I, but you and I, alone,
So much alone, so deeply by ourselves,
So far beyond the casual solitudes,
That night is only the background of our selves,
Supremely true each to its separate self,
In the pale light that each upon the other throws.
Uhm…okay Wallace. Out into the modernist night…
Night Drive
The smells of ordinariness
Were new on the night drive through France
Rain and hay and woods on the air
Made warm draughts in the open car
Signposts whitened relentlessly
Montreuil, Abbeville, Beauvais
Were promised, promised, came and went,
Each place granting its name’s fulfillment.
A combine groaning its way late
Bled seeds across its work-light.
A forest fire smouldered out.
One by one small cafes shut.
I thought of you continuously
A thousand miles south where Italy
Laid its loin to France on the darkened sphere.
Your ordinariness was renewed there.
‘Life is not a stroll across a field.’
Thanks for looking.
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—
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‘It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.’
—
—
“Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
A re-post.
—
Metaphors Of A Magnifico
Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages,
Or one man
Crossing a single bridge into a village.
This is old song
That will not declare itself . . .
Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are
Twenty men crossing a bridge
Into a village.
That will not declare itself
Yet is certain as meaning . . .
The boots of the men clump
On the boards of the bridge.
The first white wall of the village
Rises through fruit-trees.
Of what was it I was thinking?
So the meaning escapes.
The first white wall of the village . . .
The fruit-trees. . . .
Thoughts while you’re walking? marching? with a destination?
See Also: Wednesday Poem: Wallace Stevens
Acquainted with the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.”
Computational engines have some good, wise people implementing decent rules, but also quite a few less good and wise people, as well as many structural, shorter-term incentives (somewhat similar but much shorter than government). These things suck-up attention, overvaluing current authoritative sources while rewarding short-term behaviors.
Also, if it isn’t clear by now, like the plumbing and wiring, they will be used to gain and maintain power (from repressive autocracies to smothering bureaucracies to simple majorities of opinion).
As always, read for both the simple pleasures and for the utmost seriousness.
—
‘Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.’
I claim no special literary insight, other than these five short stories have stuck with me, as they have for many other readers besides. Links included.
Regular readers will recognize the same ol’ post.
——————–
Catch-up with Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut; their daily routines at the office.
Our narrator:
‘I am one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury, or in any way draws down public applause; but in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat, do a snug business among rich men’s bonds and mortgages and title-deeds. All who know me consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method.’
We all want to be alone, and to be with others, and Bartleby…Bartleby would just prefer not to:
‘Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity! ‘
——————–
As they were for many other high-school boys, the first lines were enough for me:
‘A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck.’
‘Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man?
———————-
O’Connor’s Southern Gothic style often flirts with the grotesque, and can traffic in the macabre, but there’s reason behind it, and a brilliantly skeptical, humane eye. Few writers get so many things right, in my opinion.
The world is changing, and so is the South.
Julian’s mother is living in the past:
‘They had reached the bus stop. There was no bus in sight and Julian, his hands still jammed in his pockets and his head thrust forward, scowled down the empty street. The frustration of having to wait on the bus as well as ride on it began to creep up his neck like a hot hand. The presence of his mother was borne in upon him as she gave a pained sigh. He looked at her bleakly. She was holding herself very erect under the preposterous hat, wearing it like a banner of her imaginary dignity. There was in him an evil urge to break her spirit. He suddenly unloosened his tie and pulled it off and put it in his pocket’
——————–
A lot can be ‘swallowed’ up in the desert, lost in translation; across time, language and civilizations.
Things don’t always end well for the intellectually curious and naive…:
‘It occurred to him that he ought to ask himself why he was doing this irrational thing, but he was intelligent enough to know that since he Was doing it, it was not so important to probe for explanations at that moment.’
Let’s leave it at that.
——————–
To what does a man put his hopes?
But such wonderful writing:
‘When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed.’
The Bagel
I stopped to pick up the bagel
rolling away in the wind,
annoyed with myself
for having dropped it
as if it were a portent.
Faster and faster it rolled,
with me running after it
bent low, gritting my teeth,
and I found myself doubled over
and rolling down the street
head over heels, one complete somersault
after another like a bagel
and strangely happy with myself.
Thanks for looking.
—
For those who have died in service to our country. Thank you for your sacrifice.
Addition: From Maverick Philosopher: The Difference Between Patriotism And Jingoism.
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The University Of Washington’s ‘Red Square’:
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‘Brutalist architecture flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, having descended from the modernist architectural movement of the early 20th century. The term originates from the French word for “raw”, as Le Corbusier described his choice of material béton brut, meaning raw concrete in French.’
Our local host and local guest pick favorite (unfavorite) examples of ‘raw concrete’ buildings in NYC and alternately discuss some facts about each one.
Some buildings mentioned: 375 Pearl Street is being worked on. The ‘Krull‘ Long Lines building; there’s probably something going on there.
—
As posted: Boston’s City Hall:
Buzludzha, The Communist Spaceship plopped down as though from a world of Pure Ideology, Nature properly subdued:
Here’s Australian art critic Robert Hughes discussing the Albany plaza, and almost hyperbolically criticizing the aims of modernist architecture.
***Fun fact, he pronounces the “Boogie Woogie” the “Boo-gie Woo-gie.”
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
—
—
Separation
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle
Everything I do is stitched with its color
Every six months or so…
Thanks for looking.
—
‘Political systems that prioritize substantive ends over general rules tend to erode pluralism and require coercion to resolve persistent value conflict. Nomocratic systems, by constraining power to general rules, better sustain pluralism and limit coercion.’
A Long Branch Song
Some days in May, little stars
Winked all over the ocean. The blue
Barely changed all morning and afternoon:
The chimes of the bank’s bronze clock;
The hoarse voice of Cookie, hawking
The Daily Record for thirty-five years
Pastoral
When I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best of all colors
No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.
—
You were probably imagining barely standing walls, bric-a-brac; maybe some knee-high grass amidst patches of dirt (Imagism).
I’ve tried to distill the idea further down to color saturation, no ownership (nor pride of ownership), but rather an ever-present, creative vandalism.
Thanks for looking…
The industrial part of town is often a lot more interesting…though I can make it boring.
Beach time. But if you’re old, you’d better wear a coat.
—
Two white sheets,
dripping slowly to the street,
turn blue
from looking too long.
This March day gives
weak, pale light,
shade, and light again;
warmth peeling
away from the skin.
Broken clouds
form
along the horizon,
spreading out their wings.
Stay
on the surface of things,
the last egg-yellow light
shining through
hanging gardens of rain.
Thanks for looking.
—
Geometry
I prove a theorem and the house expands:
the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling,
the ceiling floats away with a sigh.
As the walls clear themselves of everything
but transparency, the scent of carnations
leaves with them. I am out in the open
and above the windows have hinged into butterflies,
sunlight glinting where they’ve intersected.
They are going to some point true and unproven.
Best to break reality up into tasks, manageable, soluble; pushing us to the edge of one of many circles. After a few days, the dream city appears, glittering again upon the horizon.
A blue and white promise.
—
The Waste Land
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
I’d recommend this book for some context.
I suspect very few men become nearly so broken while putting the pieces back together with such lofty ambitions.
Finally, some sun.
Thanks for looking.
Two unrelated photos, but matched for color and line.
If you have time, read below the break. Nothing revolutionary, mind you, but possibly helpful…
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—
What’s Going On?
Computers As Tools (this will relate to photography): Computers are especially good at math, pattern recognition, automating processes and performing set tasks as reliably as possible (much more reliably than we can across many domains). They possess superior pattern recognition as well as sophisticated analytical/synthetic reasoning; pushing frontier knowledge. Computers are also pretty dumb, and, so far, we’ve needed to program them. They break down a lot. Code degrades.
Think of an abacus. A cash register. A complex sorting machine. Speaking computer language requires specific combinations of math and human language, where every character counts.
We lean on computers (even for maintaining some works of art, but mostly for curation). Move electrons around in the right pattern, and your computer can store works of art. Now you can have the computer analyze and synthesize a lot of writing/human wisdom about that art. It’s like having access to a larger (limited) library and a personal, automated librarian (full of sound and fury).
A novel might have taken a particular genius decades of blood, sweat and tears, speaking directly to you. They crammed themselves into the medium, pursuing immortality. You still need the read the damned novel. Mull the novel over. Let it sink in. Go for a walk. It still helps to have a good teacher walk with you.
A work of art can make us think, make us feel; sometimes changing our lives completely. It can orient an entire civilization around itself, defining what counts in life regarding truth, wisdom and beauty. The computer makes access to these works of art cheaper and easier than ever before (for better and worse).
Many dangers are obvious (lower lows): Time and attention suck. Memory-crutch. Seven-second-video-brain-rot and optimized mind-crack. We lose what we don’t use. No gatekeepers (for better and worse). We’ve incentivized loud, shallow voices into a chorus of (S)elf-aggrandizing mediocrity. Latchkey kids plopped in front of an AI engine. Relationships withering on the vine. Lost souls seeking companionship with what is, essentially, a souped-up abacus. Sexbots. Crazies made crazier. Barbarians acting more like barbarians (they hit you, they laugh. you hit them, they cry).
There are a lot of problems in the world.
Higher highs: Well-adjusted, contented, reasonable people enhancing their pretty-good lives into more opportunity and contentment. Relationships enriched and deepened because time/distance have been shortened. More and easier access to wisdom. Quicker advancement upon many success curves. Deeper natural skill + work alignment in many more cases, even for some artists (less of a gap between what you’re good at vs what you have to do).
There are a lot of good things in the world. Work at ’em.
My current use case (what I use computational engines for) is a simple photography tool. I do NOT ALTER the photos or mess too much with the creative process. A basic subscription to Anthropic’s Claude has created a not-too-shabby html tool IN A FEW MINUTES. A few hours later, after testing and re-testing, and I can shuffle photos around and look at them WITHOUT a subscription to a website/platform etc. Claude’s made a platform for uploading, shuffling and editing photos while analyzing patterns at my discretion.
This tool is NO replacement for my creative process, intuition, judgement and practice. I rarely crop. I still have to put the work in. I still get more out of friendship, mentors, intelligent (critical and friendly) feedback and individual/institutional knowledge than I do a souped-up abacus. But now I have massively shortened time and distance constraints on certain elements of my understanding.
That’s useful.
What’s happening to all of us right now (to some extent): The layer of ‘speaking the language a computer understands’ is now much less needed. It’s been quickly automated. Many software engineers and the people who maintain them, are facing a new landscape.
What counts most in the current emerging setup: Knowledge + real-world experience + judgment + willpower, even amongst programmers. It’s never been easier to use computers through a direct, natural-language interface.
Possibly useful to you: Think of each company like a large building (Amazon/Microsoft/Apple). They’re ripping out much of the old wiring and replacing it with newer wiring and smaller, more powerful electrics.
Who loses? Many, many electricians who knew how to use the old wiring (speaking a language only the computer understands). Increasingly, the rest of us can walk in the room and flip the light-switch. The new engines can make HTML tools, reports, synthesize data sets and platforms, write workflows, aggregate vast quantities of data in…minutes.
Other institutions (who else loses)? Institutions will replace their wiring along different time-horizons, with differing consequences (knowledge-work, process-minders, automate-able tasks are the most at risk). There’s a lot of asymmetry and different competitive pressures/incentives for different orgs. Also, lest we forget, garbage in=garbage out. You’re only as good as your command, and natural language commands are still commands for a ‘dumb’ computer. These things aren’t your friend.
Adoption is increasing (no longer early).
Are you using?
Have you been using?
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Consider subscribing if you like limited, sometimes incorrect knowledge.
Join today.
Schmaltz-50% more.
Bullshit-Down 30%. Certainly true.
Diminishing T & Middle-Aged Man Resignation-Up 20% last quarter. Review in process.
Just trying to find tonal matches; separate photos overlapping on one or more variables, in this case a color match.
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The Porch over the River
In the dusk of the river, the wind
gone, the trees grow still–
the beautiful poise of lightness,
the heavy world pushing toward it.
Beyond, on the face of the water,
lies the reflection of another tree,
inverted, pulsing with the short strokes
of waves the wind has stopped driving.
In a time when men no longer
can imagine the lives of their sons
this is still the world–
the world of my time, the grind
of engines marking the country
like an audible map, the high dark
marked by the flight of men,
lights stranger than stars.
The phoebes cross and re-cross
the openings, alert
for what may still be earned
from the light. The whippoorwills
begin, and the frogs. And the dark
falls, again, as it must.
The look of the world withdraws
into the vein of memory.
The mirrored tree, darkening, stirs
with the water’s inward life. What has
made it so? –a quietness in it
no question can be asked in.
THE DRY SALVAGES
(No. 3 of ‘Four Quartets’)
I
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.
Paterson
(Book 1)
“Paterson lies in the valley under the Passaic Falls
its spent waters forming the outline of his back. He
lies on his right side, head near the thunder
of the waters filling his dreams! Eternally asleep,
his dreams walk about the city where he persists
incognito. Butterflies settle on his stone ear.
Immortal he neither moves nor rouses and is seldom
seen, though he breathes and the subtleties of his machinations
drawing their substance from the noise of the pouring river
animate a thousand automations. Who because they
neither know their sources nor the sills of their
disappointments walk outside their bodies aimlessly
for the most part,
locked and forgot in their desires-unroused.‘
—
Thanks for looking.
—
Men At Forty
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.
And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practises tying
His father’s tie there in secret
And the face of the father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.
—
Thanks for looking. Just a small update.
—
—
Where My Books Go
All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken’d or starry bright.
***A touch of schmaltz since 2054.
Just putting pairs together to identify color relationships, and maybe pursue an intuition or mood through what’s in-frame.
Some work better than others. Thanks for looking.
—
Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Thanks to reader, Robin Saika:
‘Here is an interesting piece on it: https://www.winchestercollege.org/stories/About_Suffering_They_Were_Never_Wrong
The author reminds us that Auden also refers to Brueghel’s Census in Bethlehem, as well as to Icarus.‘
Images 1 and 3 below, especially, read as illustrations to me, while image 2 acts as more of a bridge. As readers know, I tend towards quiet, observational photographs. There is a progression present moving outdoors-in, to a more intimate space.
Click through for more.
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Edward Hopper practiced deep color complentarity in his paintings, balancing cool and warm. I first noticed his use of red here, and it got me thinking:
‘Red is powerful. Hopper’s using it with purpose.‘
This got me thinking a little further: ‘How much red is too much?‘
One ‘painterly’ problem: Red attracts the eye quickly, and William Eggleston went boldly red where other man had, perhaps, gone before.
Henri Matisse went full red one time, but there’s much more: Expert lines, curves, and composition (no focal point) make me feel at home. In fact, I think this domestically-minded Frenchman’s put most of his life’s purpose into his painting.
—
What’s the most aggressive, yet soothing, use of red I’ve seen consistently throughout my life?
Probably a Coke can, billboard, or truck. Check out this Arthur Meyerson photo with a Coke truck in context.
Another color problem: Color draws the eye quickly. Color is powerful. It snatches your eye and mind. The original black-and-white photographers thought color photography would distract, vulgarize, and commercialize; away from subject and composition, especially given the camera technology at the time.
It turns out the old guys weren’t entirely wrong, as many advertisers and fashion photographers barf color all over the place. Some expertly upchuck. Others, alas, puke like Brits on holiday in Ibiza.
Kids with crayons and iPads, shock and awe pop-artist and portraitists, movie directors, and even ideologues making their propaganda, use color freely. We’re all being gradually exposed to the newer synthetic AI stuff coming down the pike. We are living, I believe, amidst an information revolution (storage, access, process and attention). I mean, unless you’re color blind, you see the world in color.
Remember that one sunset and her makeup and the city behind her all blended together?
On that note, Dear Reader, this has been one of the best approaches I’ve found so far along my later, more limited, photographic journey in life:
‘Beware of color theories. Theories in color photography are dangerous. The plain fact that there are so many of them proves my point. A color philosophy comes much closer to the truth. Beware of scientific color tests. They are as quickly outdated as a timetable. Their truth is short lived. Most theories are the result of an attempt to bring one’s practical experiences into a formula. There is no formula. There are only confirmations to formulas which one has already discovered oneself. I myself love to read theories without ever using them when working.‘
Hopefully, I’ve jarred something loose inside your head.
You do the rest.
For the time being, the detective story ‘The Case Of The Five Ties’ will be discontinued. Writing crime fiction isn’t at my core, it seems.
As large organizations must ‘strategically realign and re-position‘ themselves due to ‘changing market conditions’, I, too, must ‘implement departmental changes‘ within Navincorp. Wiley, Harry and Oliveira are now free to find meaningful work in different stories, with different character arcs. Many plots are doing quite well right now. Handsomely, in fact.
To those saying my brisk and sudden beeline towards the tall grasses, where a man may find quiet repose, lacks certain qualities of leadership. Cowards, all of you.
Thanks for the email suggestions. A few of you should CLEARLY be writing your own stories. Keep at it.
Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three. Chapter Four. Chapter Five. Chapter Six.
The warm grudge and knock of turnstiles
pressing into bone;
my own shadow cast
on honey-colored stone.
Beneath the fifth emperor,
signaling to air,
the shock of each cool alley
running from the square.
This is for the maybe .075% of the people out there…
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Harry Gruyaert’s celebrated, but I’d argue he’s still underrated for his mastery of color.
From Kenn Sava, Gruyaert’s not a portraitist, per se:
‘It’s not the person that interests me most. It’s the person in its environment. To me, all the elements are important. I don’t have any particular intention. It’s just what I see.
I think humans have such a great idea about ourselves, but nature is so much more powerful.’
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According to the interview, American pop-art influenced Gruyaert, potentially freeing him from elements of European formalism (pushing him into some great color work). If you’re interested in seeing fine color, atmospheric and ‘lived-in’ photography, I’d recommend Rivages.
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As for pop-art, it can often be colorful, innovative, intuitive and non-serious…on the surface.
Frank O’Hara’s mid-century American poems are surprisingly visual. The idea of a wild freedom wrapped within casual conversation; a moment to moment associative intensity is achieved through O’Hara’s form. This is often where we long to be, on the edges of possibilities, living intensely with others (even through memory, sometimes especially through nostalgia and memory).
Also, the poem suggests this freedom as a return to our animal natures; which involves a certain view of Nature, functioning as a Romantically primitive return to Nature. Frankly, it’s a pretty good love poem.
Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth
it’s no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners
the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn’t need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water
I wouldn’t want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days.’
As for color, perhaps this also doesn’t mean color must be completely abstracted into the ambitious meaning-making mission of Mark Rothko. I mean, the sky is blue, the trees green, and the balloons red and yellow.
‘Mark Rothko sought to make paintings that would bring people to tears. “I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on,” he declared. “And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions….If you…are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point.”
Seal the compound…I mean chapel. (come to Houston, land of little zoning, fair pilegrim).
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Readers will know this blog maintains skepticism for pop-art Neo-dadaism and the consecration of ordinary objects along the Duchamp line (‘American Standard’?). Making Duchampian exceptions rules, even clever rules, can desecrate what’s important.
Everyday people, living right, must keep the important things in view, namely wife/husband/children/parents/death/taxes/health/time; not merely their own impulses nor artistic visions (artists remain acutely aware of such indifference). Meaning is usually to be found within love for another, and this usually means everyday people (& the everyday within us) lives between the sacred and profane: The 9-5 grind and the unexpected conversation about grandma’s death, the enveloping silence afterwards.
Artists, at their best, point towards wisdom, truth and beauty regarding everyday things. All the artists I’m linking to are doing so in one way or another, although ‘how’ and ‘how well’ are endlessly disputed.
I’ve already seen a thousand urinals in my life, Marcel, even a few in my dreams.
The triumph of the conceptual over the actual, the mass-produced over the created; perhaps these aren’t entirely healthy trends. The retreat into (S)elf, and the retreat into irony alongside (A)rt as commodity, perhaps these are dead-ends as much as they are freshly-paved streets. The lamentations of art as (R)eligion could be a leading indicator of a deeper hunger for meaning; a hunger with as many bad as good outcomes for artists and everyday people…
Some food for thought, Dear Reader.
As a contrast, here’s some American art that’s more grounded; some realism with psychological depth, albeit with impressionist influence.
Night Shadows by Edward Hopper:
The black and white was made in 1924.
I think Raymond Chandler’s High Window is among the best of the American detective novel.
Here are some quotations of his, if you’re interested.
“Los Angeles was just a big dry sunny place with ugly homes and no style, but good-hearted and peaceful. It had the climate they yap about now. People used to sleep out on porches. Little groups who thought they were intellectual used to call it the Athens of America.”
Here is the link. It’s been a long time since they just reviewed the book and not the author.
Boy, oh boy, James Ellroy: America’s best current historical crime fiction writer, showing up to entertain, shock and vulgarize:
The poem that most came to mind after looking at Hopper:
Acquainted with the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Separation
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle
Everything I do is stitched with its color
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The painting is Monet’s ‘Haystack, 1891‘ at the SAM. Full series here.
‘In a series comprised of over 20 paintings, Monet recreated haystacks during varying weather conditions and at different times of day. Here, a single stack of wheat sits in a sundrenched, late-summer field framed by poplars and rolling hills.’
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Spring Oak
Call it a granite moon
which fills the fields
beyond the light
of a neighbor’s barn.
The first spring calf stood
today. on tufted grass
alive, bundled by the wind.
Its stillborn twin
we found nearby.
The barn steeple rises
up, as it must,
the stars like salt in my eyes.
Gazing down the wells
of the afternoon,
the sunlight turns silvery-blue.
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Give me one minute and your mind. 1. Please read the poem aloud. 2. Take a closer look at the photo 3. Play the first 30 seconds of Chopin’s Nocturne in B-flat minor, Op 9, No. 1. (past the 00:26 mark).
The goal: Create a dreamy, contemplative experience before you move on.
Thanks to all.
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering,breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
All the best to you and yours. May the New Year bring you peace and prosperity.
Thanks for stopping by, and to everyone that has.
