Miyamoto Musashi, The Shrike

Politics.

Since ideologies amount to differing ways of defining the world – different accounts of what counts as a fact, as evidence, and as a sufficient definition — ideologies necessarily come into conflict not only in principle but especially in human behavior and interaction. Where ideologies are in accord, disagreement may be worked out in terms of commonly accepted and acknowledged principles of conflict resolution.

Two people committed, for example, to the guidance of formal logic, to empirical data (confirmed to a high degree of probability), and to a foundational set of axiomatic principles have a prospect of settling any disagreements that may arise between them. All such disagreements would be, by definition, a consequence of the incorrect application of logic, incorrect evaluation of data, or misapprehension of axioms. Likewise, two adherents to a particular subset of a particular religion would have greater chances of successful conflict resolution than members of two mutually exclusive faiths would have.

People whose most fundamental interpretive commitments are defined by conflicting assumptions about the nature of experience cannot, in principle, resolve the differences in a way that comports with the conflicting worldviews in question. Thus, pragmatism inclines people to deviate from consistency with their assumptions at least insofar as doing so makes coexistence and a degree of toleration possible. The negotiation of this compromise we call "politics".

Note that while practical matters force a negotiation of conflicting perspectives in terms of compromise, practical matters are not the only cause of compromise. Thus political compromise is interwoven with compromise that occurs for other reasons. For this reason, political thought and action are not reducible to an algorithm.

Politics always involves not merely negotiation but also discord. The discord provides impetus to the protection of ideological and presuppositional interests so that compromise does not lead to self-obliteration. The self-protective impetus of ideological aggression is captured well in remarks made by the seventeenth-century kensei Miyamoto Musashi:

When we are fighting with the enemy, even when it can be seen that we can win on the surface with the benefit of the Way, if his spirit is not extinguished, he may be beaten superficially yet undefeated in spirit deep inside. With this principle of 'penetrating the depths' we can destroy the enemy's spirit in its depths, demoralising him by quickly changing our spirit. This often occurs.

~ Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings, trans. Victor Harris, (Woodstock: The Overlook Press, 1974), p. 81. (at Amazon)

Musashi here calls attention to the notion that winning the battle and winning the war are two different and not necessarily concomitant things. Redrawing the geographic and political boundaries which define the dominion of ideologically opposed bodies of people is a compromise which is provisional at best. The impetus for self-definition provides also for other-negation, not necessarily in a violent mode, but always in a mode that removes the threat of self-negation. Miyamoto Musashi's comment is directed toward this idea. If one protagonist in a conflict successfully eradicates the ideological underpinnings of the opponent, the impetus for self-definition is sated, and the threat to self is abated.

It is perhaps most characteristic of politics that, although the goal of self-preservation motivates every negotiation, the rhetoric and intercourse of political participants is not necessarily a rhetoric of violence or conflict. Approchement, appeasement, aggiornamento, détente, sympathy, aggression — all of these terms can characterize political interactions which at their core have the goal not of compromise but of dominion. Says Musashi,

When you decide to attack, keep calm and dash in quickly, forestalling the enemy. Or you can advance seemingly strongly but with a reserved spirit, forestalling him with the reserve. Alternatively, advance with as strong a spirit as possible, and when you reach the enemy move with your feet a little quicker than normal, unsettling him and overwhelming him sharply. Or, with your spirit calm, attach with a feeling of constantly crushing the enemy, from first to last. The spirit is to win in the depths of the enemy. These are all ken no sen (to set him up).

~ same, p. 71.

For good or ill, commitment to a perception of truth always entails hegemony, and denial of truth is itself a commitment that entails hegemony. So, politics is always Kendo, the way of the sword, and ideology determines whether and in what way that sword is metaphorical.

(Note: this piece is from spring of 1994, when the intarwebs consisted of Usenet and Scott Yanoff's list, which was incredibly useful in tandem with Lynx in a world of gophers and Archie.)

Via Instapundit comes the tragic lament of "Rebecca Chapman, who has a master of arts in English and comparative literature from Columbia University" and who "hit bottom professionally last summer when she could not even get a job that did not pay."  In the company of "Willie Osterweil, 25, an aspiring novelist who graduated magna cum laude from Cornell in 2009," and "Rachel Rosenfelt, 26, who graduated from Barnard College in 2009," and other like-minded young'uns, she formed an echo chamber for the palaver of "overeducated, underemployed postgrads willing to work free to be heard on subjects like Kanye West’s effect on the proletarian meta-narrative of hip-hop."

This meditation on optimism from the NYTimes comes on the heels of widespread mockery from rightward pundits of poor, dream-chasing Joe Therrien, who only wanted to be a puppeteer and is now regarded in some quarters as a misfit toy. (Note, though, that Michael Barone, a man of dexter sentiment, defends Therrien, noting that "he presumably felt that he could be a good enough puppeteer to make a living at it and could find a job doing so. That’s the sort of thing the late Steve Jobs told Stanford graduates that they ought to do." The Anchoress also has a thing or two to say in defense of pursuing puppetry, if not paper.

The broad cultural question at stake is whether China has the right idea: to phase out majors and programs that consistently produce graduates who prove unemployable on the basis of their education.

The issue, as always, is the legitimacy and scope of state subsidization. What stake does the government have, in behalf of its citizens, in perpetuating the production of puppeteers (taken as a proxy for the entire class of overrepresented, underemployable domains of interest)?

It's by no means a new theme. Roll back a hundred thirty-odd years, and you'll find Thomas Henry Huxley and Matthew Arnold arguing against and for the humanities with greater eloquence and insight than any of today's pundits. Later, Dewey wanted to regress toward the mean for the sake of making or half-baking a compliant, progressive workforce. His ideas still prompt controversy among Arnoldites, even if Huxleyites and cynics regard the issue as moot.

Do we want to be pragmatic above all else? Is it unwise for the ideal to temper the real? Folks who discern that they're puppeteers or poets, calligraphers or critics, artisans or artists, shouldn't bear blame and suffer disdain for rolling the dice on their dreams. They only merit mockery when, failing, they whine about how their society's public policies didn't long indulge them.

The pursuit of a culture of literary salons is not a path orthogonal to hard-nosed capitalism; when successful, it's a symptom or index of thriving capitalism. And although taking the risk when times are lean may be ill advised, the humanistic goal of chasing a cultural dream isn't inherently wrong or risible. To the contrary, the humanistic goal is the point not only of the risk, but of capitalism itself, rightly construed.

This is a post about Marian Call, and especially about her lyrics and her new double album Something Fierce.  The second in a series, it follows this one: http://www.popehat.com/2011/10/05/shell-sing-for-you-part-1/. Take a moment to read that one if you'd like this one to make more sense!

Continue Reading »

With the Facebook Timeline just around the corner, and with Steve Jobs shuffling off this mortal coil, I'd like to consider what makes some technologies so different, so appealing.

Last night I asked my art history students what was distinctive about the contribution of Steve Jobs. A few compared him to inventors such as Edison or Tesla. A few looked for an answer in his emphasis on design. I joined the second group and challenged the first by pointing out (as The Economist had already done with great clarity) that Jobs had invented none of the technologies or devices for which he's best known: the mouse-driven computer, the digital audio player, the smart phone, and the tablet. But I also pressed that second group with a follow-up question: if his contribution had to do with design, not invention, then just what was the nature of his contribution to design?

The ensuing discussion was brief and stimulating. After the students had shared their views, I shared mine: I think Steve Jobs emphasized machine beauty with such focus and force that he made the artificiality of devices disappear. Calling him "The Magician", The Economist ascribes to him the ability to connect emotion to technology:

"His great achievement was to combine an emotional spark with computer technology, and make the resulting product feel personal."

Almost. It is the relationship we have with ourselves and our own capabilities that is emotional and personal; Jobs introduced into this already extant feedback loop a device which amplifies our self-signal without getting in our way. Rather than wallow in the narcissism of self-admiration as we see our latent powers amplified, we call the device itself cool. But whenever we call a device cool, what we mean is that it can easily make us more powerful in a way we desire. And that's cool.

What is machine beauty? The clearest and most useful answer to this question comes from David Gelernter (innovator and former patent-holder of the Lifestream technology, which has been at the center of consequential litigation involving Apple). Many stakeholders have by now laid claim to this concept, and perhaps we'll have a post here someday on the idiocy of many software patents, the Peter/Paul problems in patent granting, and the incoherence of the very idea of a software patent. For now, though, I want to bracket out the question of Apple's possible employment of Microsoftian market practices. Gelernter is noteworthy here not just because of his technological innovation, but also because he thinks deeply about the usability of machines, about art, and about beauty.

In his terse, punchy book Machine Beauty, Gelernter proposes a simple definition of the factor that distinguishes great technologies: machine beauty is the well-balanced integration of simplicity and power. Consider technologies that consists of devices. A device may be powerful but not simple; it requires the user to learn, study, and practice. A device may be simple but not powerful; it's hardly worthy of attention, so weak is the signal it delivers. And a device may be neither. But the device that manages to empower the user with virtually no learning curve is machine-beautiful.

The iPhone exemplifies this delicate balance. One day there was no iPhone; the next day there was an iPhone. And on that next day, children and elders, techies and Luddites, the deft and the daft— these were all standing around Apple Store displays and using the iPhone, with no instruction, to do things they wanted to do that they had previously been unable to do so efficiently, transparently, and enjoyably. Machine beauty.

Here, then, is a third question: why do we value technologies that are machine-beautiful?

I think it's easier to frame an answer to this question if we think about technologies in the way I recommended in my earlier post on Rodin's The Burghers of Calais:

I prefer to emphasize that technology always stands in a certain relation to the people who use it: technology is anything that amplifies what the human body can already do. A club amplifies the ability to punch. A gun amplifies the ability to throw. A telephone amplifies the ability to shout. A motor vehicle amplifies the ability to run. Clothing amplifies the protective and insulating qualities of skin. Architecture, oddly enough, is large, static, communal clothing. Telecast media amplify vision or audition. The hard drive and RAM of a computer amplify the ability to remember and to calculate. And so on.

Any technology may be understood this way, and therefore anything that acts as a force multiplier on what humans in general can already do may be construed as a technology.

If we take technology in general as any means of converting our existing capabilities into superpowers, then the appeal of a machine-beautiful device is immediately apparent: the power of the device makes us harder, better, faster, stronger, and the simplicity of the device spares us from having to think too much about the device itself. The technology is a nearly transparent biomodification that empowers us to do with facility from now on what we could do only at great pains before.

The distinctive contribution of Steve Jobs, as I see it, is that he created a post-now class of consumer citizens: the Cybourgeoisie.

In taste and disposition, we at Popehat are a diverse lot. For example, Ken is on record as an avid aficionado of opera. Patrick, a former college dj to whom the young'uns still turn in a pinch, is known for his enigmatic and challenging sets. After our comrade Ezra withdrew to his special place, Patrick took up the mantle and now offers sporadic and stochastic coverage of the audial scene. Yes, Patrick even covers symphonies and opera to placate Ken. As for me, I'm a fan of John Dowland and Yma Sumac and Radiohead and Ravi Shankar and Fred Astaire. Eclectic, we.

There must be some overlap among us, though we haven't mapped it out. But this much we already know: we are all fans of Marian Call.  Even Ezra, peace be upon him, was a fan of Marian Call.

So my next post will be a deepish dive into Marian's music or, more accurately, her poetry. And in a third post, perhaps we'll have a secret toy surprise. But if you have no patience for close reading and texty-feely artgeek stuff — if you're the Shut Up And Sing type – then this post right here is for you. Here's the Executive Summary/tl;dr version of the Minimum You Oughtta Know™ before venturing forth:

• Marian Call is an independent folk-funky, heartfelt, humorous, jazzy, torchy, quirky singer-songwriter currently thriving in Anchorage, which is really just North-North-North Seattle and thus a super natural fit for a Washington girl with a strong sense of place.
• We at Popehat have a colossal (aggregate) IQ, and yet we're pretty sure she could lap us.
• While majoring in choral composition at Stanford (the axe, the axe), Marian realized that her inner vector was driving or drawing her otherwhere. Recognizing that digital distribution had altered the fundamentals of the music industry, she decided to embrace a newly feasible unsigned, try-before-you-buy, pay-from-the-heart business model. Next thing you know, she's crankin' out compelling music and hoping to roll a hard six on her gamble that educated and motivated consumers of art will sustain the art(ists) they like (and thereby not let her starve).
• Marian Call is a word nerd, but has become the preeminent Geek Chanteuse to a wide and motley array of awkwardly obsessive acolytes. She's more than this, of course, but clearly no less. Her saintly attributes include exotic percussion equipment (a rainstick, a manual typewriter named Madeleine, a tea can containing the cremated remains of Zippy, a story-laden family cat) and measured quantities of dark, malty beer. Her superpower is recognizing paradoxes or antinomies in human experience and distilling them to heart- and mind-moving simplicity without pretending to resolve them.
• Taking seriously the business of enjoying close communion with her fans, Marian successfully completed within the 2010 calendar year a seat of the pants, fan-semi-coordinated tour of all 50 states, several Canadian provinces, and a selection of realms in cyberspace.
• During and after her tour, she worked on her third fully-fledged production piece: Something Fierce. She released this double album into crit-space just a few days ago (fancy lyrics, plain lyrics, music). Give it a listen! If you enjoy it, give it a purchase! (Cool cuts: 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 18, etc!)
• If you are a MacArthur nominator, I would like to point out that Marian Call is just, verdant, and peaceful.
• ProTip: You can also still listen to/enjoy/buy her album Vanilla and her commissioned Firefly/Galactica album Got To Fly.

That's the wakizashi; the katana comes next time.  Meanwhile, listen to Marian Call. She'll sing for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIO8nI2C8Z8

… And here's Part Two.

Noah Charney of The Secret History of Art is excerpting a short, accessible overview of Leonardo. Part one delivers some biographical background. Part two explains his artistic significance. If you'd like a quick and dirty overview better grounded in reality than the usual noisy treatments, here's your chance!

It won't surprise long-time readers to learn that I approve of Justice Scalia's majority opinion in Brown v. Entertainment Merchant's Association, which struck down California's ban on the sale of violent videogames to minors.  The opinion is more or less mandated by United States v. Stevens, another case we cheered.

So I won't dwell (other than to applaud it briefly) on the majority's holding that minors do have First Amendment rights, nor on the cynicism of California's attempt to end-run the First Amendment by claiming that all speech may be regulated in the name of protecting children.

I want to dwell on the concurring opinion of Justice Samuel Alito, which shows the danger posed by statutes such as California's Violent Videogame Act, and of judges who believe their opinions as art critics ought to be the law of the land.  This passage:

It is certainly true, as the Court notes, that “ ‘[l]iterature, when it is successful draws the reader into the story, makes him identify with the characters, invites him to judge them and quarrel with them, to experience their joys and sufferings as the reader’s own.’ ”  Ante, at 11 (quoting American Amusement Machine Assn. v. Kendrick, 244 F. 3d 572, 577 (CA7 2001)).  But only an extraordinarily imaginative reader who reads a description of a killing in a literary work will experience that event as vividly as he might if he played the role of the killer in a video game. To take an example, think of a person who reads thepassage in Crime and Punishment in which Raskolni- kov  kills the old pawn broker with an  axe.  See F. Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment 78 (Modern Library ed. 1950).  Compare that reader with a video-game player who creates an avatar that bears his own image; who sees a realistic image of the victim and the scene of the killing in high definition and in three dimensions; who is forced to decide whether or not to kill  the victim and decides to do so; who then pretends to grasp an axe, to raise it above the head of the victim, and then to bring it down; who hearsthe thud of the axe hitting her head and her cry of pain;who sees her split skull and feels the sensation of blood onhis face and hands.  For most people, the two experiences will not be the same.

illustrates the problem perfectly.

For those who haven't read it, spoilers follow:

Continue Reading »

David is not merely a co-blogger here.

1. To the extent the blog works as intended, it's probably because David (and sometimes Grandy) has fixed it when I've broken it.

2. David can explain great art with a gifted teacher's touch: that is, he can covey simultaneously that (1) there's a huge amount you don't know about it, but (2) you're capable of getting it, even if you thought it was over your heard. Someday we'll bully or shame him into completing this epic series of posts, which was building (as I understand it) towards a conclusion extremely appealing to a segment the audience of this blog. He also blogs about art at Baroque Potion.

3. If that were not enough, he is now also blogging quite vigorously at Intermediate Java. I am reliably informed that people who are capable of understanding this sort of thing [not me] will get a lot out of this kind of thing.

Check it out.

AT ETSY, it's the Distribution Plushy collection.  Who doesn't need a plush Poisson distribution?

DON'T TELL ALTHOUSE: A perfect storm of art, sex, polls, and dubious methodology at Muhlenberg College.

SIR LATTIMORE BROWN, "THE MOST UNFORTUNATE ARTIST IN THE ANNALS OF SOUL MUSIC," has found peace at last.  After reading his obituary, I'm pretty sure Brown would have been the most unfortunate artist in the annals of blues music.

WAIT!  YOU MEAN I CAN GET ONE OF THE FINEST "OPEN ROAD" ALBUMS EVER RECORDED, and support Popehat?  Sign me up! Remember, all purchases made through this site help defray our bandwidth expenses, and cost you nothing extra.

Is "Aqua Boogie" the funniest song ever recorded?  Decide for yourself:

One thing is for sure. Listening to Parliament's "The Motor Booty Affair", the album from which this song is drawn, is like eating two bowls of Count Chocula and four bowls of Frankenberry on Saturday morning, just before a two hour marathon of Roadrunner cartoons.

I'm riffing on prehistoric art over at Baroque Potion.

There aren't many genuinely free-form radio stations left in the country.  I have the good fortune to live in listening distance of two, but you're probably not so lucky.

If you're a music geek, I suggest that you tune in, NOW, to KUSF, which the way things are going is about to be one of the deceased freeform stations.  A nationwide simulcast / death watch is going on. Because the University of San Francisco kicked all of the students out and sold the license to a commercial broadcaster.  A shame. It was a great station, and a far better (and cheaper) investment of  someone's donations California's tax dollars than the $350,00 annual Los Angeles calligraphy budget, in that, you know, it actually trained engineers and radio voice talent, for approximately no money at all.

If you're a music geek cynic, you'll mourn. If you're an optimist, you'll listen and hope. Either way, go to this site and listen now. Trust me, it's better than the pap Clear Channel's offering.

If you can't find the simulcast on the KUSF site, google WXYC, WFMU, or WXDU, all of which are running it.