The Woodshed

It made me laugh

2007-06-06T09:46:00.000-05:00

Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play in Time, Space Shakespeare Intended

PODCAST: The Joshua Bell Experiment, part II

2007-05-30T10:55:00.000-05:00

World-class musicians aren't supposed to be street performers. But that is just what violinist Joshua Bell was in a recent impromptu performance in a subway stop in the American capital city. The reactions of the commuters were ... interesting, as documented by the Washington Post.

For us as working artists, this experiment raised many questions: Why didn't more people in the station slow down and listen? Do we have sensory overload, and no mental space for music like Bell's? Why did every child in the subway want to stop to listen?

Join us as we explore these and more questions in this second podcast of a several part series. We welcome your $.02 in the Comments & Questions section, below.

Running time: 15:17
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Discussion participants:

Keywords: Joshua Bell, Pop Music, Sensory Overload, Industrial Culture, Technology Explosion, Musak, iPod, Creative Paralysis, Discernment, Artist/Audience Agreement, Children's Curiosity, Pied Piper, Frames, Assumptions

On odd versus sane in art

2007-05-21T07:53:00.000-05:00

This quote from G.K. Chesterton (from his work, Orthodoxy) is quite provocative:

... oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

Rather turns Flaubert's famous maxim about normalcy in artist livelihood — "Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work" — on its head, usefully. Namely, that truly "violent and original (or creative)" work is better able to be absorbed by audiences when it happens to main characters that are regular and orderly (or at least seemingly so).

For non-literary arts, such as music, the transfer of this would best apply to the main musical themes/melodies (which composition elaborates and bends through the course of the entire work). In other words, better to choose simple, grokkable themes, and then develop those "violently and originally" than to start with difficult or complex themes, which, in turn, leave less room for violent and original elaboration, because these already are that way.

I agree that it is easier for audiences to resonate with art that's initial gestures fall into the realm of the expected, recognizable, and to some degree conventional and customary. Such is simply how human perception works; we require an already-bushwacked path, to feel safe treading upon it. Or, in short, the idea here is to start common, make weird.

This, as it happens, in a major reason I think people by and large did not resonate with Joshua Bell's subway performance. He started with "odd", so to speak. The only aspect of his performance that partook of anything held in common was his attire — the ubiquitous "street performer". But even the choice of attire didn't help the audience response, as the article clearly shows. The particular works Bell performed (what Dan in the podcast referred to as "the message") clearly in this case were not held in common, nor were either his name or his mere face. Whereas, as I said in Part One of the recent podcast, if he had performed covers of pop tunes, that may not have been as sophisticated an aesthetic choice, but almost certainly, more people would have been caught by the tones, in terms of musical recognition, at least. The wheels would have been greased, as it were, to invite the commuters to stop for a moment. At which point, Bell could have hit them with a Bach or Schubert, perhaps to better result. That is, if by "better" we mean "more people actively listening", which is only one of several possible definitions, of course.

Exit question 1: do all disciplines of art have their own versions of "covers" as music does?

Exit question 2: do all disciplines of art have their own versions of "normal characters", as Chesterton described, as literature does?

PODCAST: The Joshua Bell Experiment, part I

2007-05-16T00:16:00.000-05:00

World-class musicians aren't supposed to be street performers. But that is just what violinist Joshua Bell was in a recent impromptu performance in a subway stop in the American capital city. The reactions of the commuters were ... interesting, as documented by the Washington Post.

For us as working artists, this experiment raised many questions: What exactly is this an experiment in? Is the audience response a sign of widespread cultural decline? Is Joshua Bell no better than the average rock band just starting out? What is a "venue", anyway?

Join us as we explore these and more questions in this first podcast of a several part series. We welcome your $.02 in the Comments & Questions section, below.

Running time: 21:52
Subscribe via iTunes
Or Download MP3

Discussion participants:

Keywords: Joshua Bell, James Joyce, Cultural Decline, Western Canon, Genius, Marshall McLuhan, Street Performer, Medium, Message, Frame, Venue, Stradivarius, Busker, Noise, Bureaucrats, Hippy, Beauty, Classical Music Appreciation, Covers, Pop Music, Beginner Rock Bands, Original Compositions, Transforming Audiences, Attention, Dance, Ballet, Bach, Schubert

Bach's "Chaconne"

2007-05-09T12:27:00.000-05:00

Performed here by Jascha Heifetz. The "Chaconne", or "ciaccona" refers to the fifth and final movement of the Partita No. 2 for solo violin in D minor. Below, it is in two parts, though the music is composed to be performed continuously.

Listen to Heifetz's performance, and ask yourself, Is Brahms correct when he said, about the Chaconne, "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."?

Reviewing Saturday Night Fever

2007-04-26T15:45:00.000-05:00

A surprisingly in-depth review of the 70s classic film, from the heart of conservativeland, and the pen of John Derbyshire. It is on the occasion of the film's release 30th anniversary. You get juicy moments like this:

Tony understands instinctively that, to what Confucius called the junzi, the superior man, honor, recognition, and right conduct mean everything, money nothing.

Most memorably, Tony's strong sense of natural justice and fair play lifts him above his gang's ethnic squabbling with the Puerto Ricans, prompting him to fierce anger when he and Stephanie are awarded a dance prize unfairly, out of flagrant ethnic favoritism. He walks over to the Puerto Rican couple and thrusts the prize trophy and cash envelope into their hands — "Congratulations! I'd like to give you this, and I'd like to give you that, because I think you deserve it, all right?" — then walks right out of the dance hall, fuming.

Tony's character includes a proper component of manly tenderness, too. Driving Stephanie back from Manhattan, they have a shouting match. Stephanie, wounded by his words, breaks down and cries. Tony repents at once, and does his best to soothe and heal: "It's all right ... Don't worry about nothin'." His reward at last is Stephanie's first tentative kiss, on his cheek.

Everybody is drawn to this instinctive decency. To be a natural gentleman like this is to be a natural leader. Tony controls his little clique effortlessly, directing their activities ("We ain't droppin' nothin' till I say so"), trying to prompt them to his own innate standards of manliness, scolding them for their pill popping ("Can't you guys get off on dancin'?"), instructing Annette in the rudiments of female honor: "That's the thing a girl's gotta decide early on. You gotta decide whether you're gonna be a nice girl or a c***."

With that solid moral framework to support him, Tony is acquiring wisdom rapidly. He has a long way to go, to be sure, but you don't doubt he'll get there. Did Bobby C kill himself? the investigating cop asks. Tony: "There's ways of killin' yourself without killin' yourself." Indeed there are, Tony — many, many ways.

Poetry and the Poltical

2007-04-17T10:30:00.000-05:00

There is an interesting article (Poetry and Politics) over at the Kenyon Review blog -- on what political poetry is and how it should function.

Here are a couple of good quotes:

I believe that any literary achievement is relational. In other words, a poem achieves its greatness in relation to multiple values, traditions, protocols, formal characteristics, styles, shifts, variations, modes, sounds, and beliefs. Truly great poetry, that which demands rereading generation after generation, may be that which most successfully carries out its work with regard to and in terms of many such concerns, and in doing so uncannily appeals to future generations’ concerns, needs, beliefs, and desires.

And:

If the poem is to be a living act, then it must relate itself to a variety of human concerns, experiences, understandings, and judgments. Among these concerns will likely be such issues as the establishment and control of spheres and conduits of force and influence, the struggle for identity, who gets to speak, and even what is speakable. In addressing these issues, poetry is likely to be implicitly political. There is no reason why it should not at times be political in an overt sense as well.

Among many in the poetry world, including myself at times, political poetry has been seen as somehow "less than" other modes of poetic expression. In this article, Jerry Harp argues that all great poetry will be necessarily political if it deals with human concerns.

As long as we are able to read the poem for what it is, and not attempt to deconstruct it in some way to demonstrate meanings not contained in the poem itself, I am all for this point of view.

As an example, Harp cites William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" as a political poem in the sense he is advocating:

In the course of its natural descriptions, the poem also considers memory, seclusion, the “din / Of town and cities,” “unremembered acts / Of kindness and of love,” the soul, “the life of things,” prospects of future things, “coarser pleasures of boyish days,” the alienation from nature of human consciousness, the motion and spirit “that impels / All thinking things”–the poem contemplates all of this and more in a language of stately iambic pentameter that swerves uncannily toward human speech rather than the expectations of poetic diction (and every generation must swerve away from what has become its immediate precursors’ expectations.)

I think that Harp is arguing for a broader definition of the political, one that incorporates all of human experience -- perhaps one that can be found in Webster's under "politics," definition 5a: "the total complex of relations between people living in a society."

In this sense, all great poetry is political.

How things together

2007-04-16T07:29:00.000-05:00

If you're not familiar with Clive James, then I recommend you get acquainted with him, post-haste (as Paglia is to Dallman, Clive James is to me). Slate is currently running a number of excerpts from his latest book, Cultural Amnesia, which is as good a place as any to start. For now, here's a rather pertinent quote from a recent interview:

I'd like people, young people especially, when they're around college age, to come to the Web site, to get an idea of how things hang together, because they really do. They hang together through creativity. There is a general impulse in mankind towards creation, and that comes out in all kinds of fields, not just in the arts but in sports. I think it would help if the bright young were encouraged to think that way, even though they would go on to specialized careers. They should realize that they are part of something, which, when it is all added together, is worth defending.

Literature Map

2007-04-07T15:49:00.000-05:00

Looking to expand your reading list? You might want to check out Literature Map. Enter the name of a writer you like, and it will splay out other writers that readers of your writer read. Frankly, I'm not sure what criteria they're basing their selections on. Some of the writers I entered are: Tim O'Brien, William Shakespeare, Graham Greene, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Even putting Anne Rice and Michael Crichton on the same screen as William Shakespeare makes me vomit a little in my mouth. It's true, I'm a snob. Hey, nothing really against Crichton or Rice, except as far as actual prose goes, they're shit. Same with JK Rowling, and I like the Potter books. And what the hell is Maya Angelou doing hovering right next to Dante? Anthony Bourdain on the same planet as Laura Ingalls Wilder? Don't get me wrong, I love Anthony Bourdain. Graham Greene yielded some pretty good results. So you might get a kick out of this, if for no other reason than to exclaim, what are they thinking?! And while you're at it, go read some Graham Greene.

Can Poetry Matter?

2007-03-31T10:53:00.000-05:00

Can poetry matter?

Can our poetry matter?

Can our open mic poetry matter more than the Matterhorn's stature matters to the alpinist tracker scaling the rafters of the world for a gasp of something grander?

See, we believe that by merely reading a piece we can release beastly people from their unceasing idiocy.

For we hope that our quotes will choke back the gropes of those dope-smokers who tie ropes with the names of our necks on them.

But there is no proof that the Truths leaving our tooths can soothe the crucial pains of the youth anymore than a Christian prayer.

For it's at its barest that our lit's as lost in superstition as the redneck thighs we hypo-critize in our anti-Condoleeza anthologies.

So why fight the fact that we're but supplicants ranting against the tense, dense silence of thoughts left in notebooks dropped in closets,

Waiting like cows in the stable at our café tables to pour our prose poem piss in the shifting sands of the world's unlistening ditches,

Never knowing its effects, if it protects or how it affects change -- for there is no scientific method for poetry

...at least not yet.

[Note: this is a cross-post from Zaadz, which no one reads anymore, so...]

Re: The attention economy: where artists shall reign

2007-03-30T15:11:00.000-05:00

Paul,

I'm confused about how you and Goldhaber are using the notion of "economy". So when I listen to an album on my iPod while working out, this is an attention-economic situation? Obviously if I purchased the album, there's tangible value exchanged. But it seems we are leaving aside that for this notion of "attention economy". And I just don't get it.

The attention economy: where artists shall reign

2007-03-29T15:48:00.000-05:00

Because we focus on making things which attract attention to themselves, we artists could be perfectly suited for survival in the emergence of what blogger Michael Goldhaber calls the "attention economy".

Goldhaber's contentious thesis goes something like this:

An economy is organized around that which society finds scarce. In the middle ages, that might have been safety, and arable land. In the industrial age, money and material goods. In the information age, where millions of advertisements and media entities compete with each other for survival, the scarce entity is eyeballs and ear drums, that is, attention.

It's no longer true that a general population pays attention to a handful of stars. Thanks to the Internet, everyone today is a star to some degree. I am competing right with thousands of other semi-famous bloggers for your time and attention. If you pay attention to this article and find something in it useful, I have increased my share of "attention capital" in your mindspace, which I may be able to use to serve certain needs in the future. That is, you might become my fan, and might help me out in some way down the line (by purchasing my book, reading future works, giving me your email address, helping me promote myself, etc).

As an artist who works in various media, I have something of an advantage over non-artists in that I can make attractive objects. I may not have great financial wealth, but I can direct the flow of attention through various tricks of aesthetic seduction. It is up to me what I use this for: personal gain, social gain, or some mixture of the two.

You too, if you're reading this, most likely have some sort of artistic bent. This is your key to wealth and effectiveness in this new economy: not old money, not land and title, not stockpiles of guns nor crowns and carriages: artistry. Making pretty things. Capturing eyeballs. Capturing minds.

Use it with wisdom.

Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan

2007-03-27T19:28:00.000-05:00

This is a great (although long) video from 1968, and I think it's just as relevant today as it was then. I wish we had TV shows like this today.

If Socrates was a professor today...

2007-03-20T17:54:00.000-05:00

... perhaps these might be some of his teacher evaluations, written by his students. In any event, these are pretty funny. Here's one example:

For someone who is always challenging conventional wisdom (if I heard that term one more time I was going to die), Professor Socrates' ideal republic is pretty darn static. I mean there is absolutely no room to move there in terms of intellectual development and social change.

Also, I was taking this course on queer theory and one of the central concepts was "phallocentricism" and I was actually glad to have taken Socrates because he is a living, breathing phallocentrist!

Also, I believe this Republic that Prof. Socrates wants to design — as if anyone really wants to let this dreadful little man design an entire city — is nothing but a plan for a hegemonic, masculinist empire that will dominate all of Greece and enforce its own values and beliefs on the diverse communities of our multicultural society.

I was warned about this man by my adviser in women's studies. I don't see that anything other than white male patriarchy can explain his omnipresence in the agora and it certainly is evident that he contributes nothing to a multicultural learning environment. In fact, his whole search for the Truth is evidence of his denial of the virtual infinitude of epistemic realities (that term wasn't from queer theory, but from French lit, but it was amazing to see how applicable it was to queer theory).

One thing in his defense is that he was much more positive toward gay and lesbian people. Actually, there was this one guy in class, Phaedroh or something like that, who Socrates was always looking at and one day they both didn't come to class and they disappeared for the whole day. I'm quite sure that something is going on there and that the professor is abusing his power over this student.

On "Kitsch" and the Timeless

2007-03-14T19:50:00.000-05:00

Wonderful figurative painter Odd Nerdrum on kitsch:

"In the same way there are different levels in art, (since the elimination of quality criteria, there are in reality only two levels of art - art and famous art), there are also levels of kitsch. Levels from bad kitsch, harmless kitsch, and transcendental kitsch which stops laughter. The goal is to reach this highest expression, where vulnerability goes beyond irony, a presence beyond abstraction."

Do read the entire essay here, (which appeared in an April 2000 advertisement in Artnews magazine.) I don't agree with everything said,(or rather, I do agree, but held in perspective along with a few modern and "post" modern sensibilities.) Nor do I jive with everything on the list of "kitsch dogma." However I do agree entirely with this:

For a kitsch creator all masters are contemporary.

Strange statues from around the world

2007-03-10T12:54:00.000-06:00

Some great pictures. Check them out. Below is but one example, in Manhattan.

Paglia, to poets

2007-03-06T15:40:00.000-06:00

Quoted here, from 2005:

Artists need to stop preaching to the choir. The art world has withdrawn into a useless and artificial elite. Poets have to start addressing the nation and show the public again that poetry can be hot and create excitement.

Disney and Dalí: Destino

2007-03-05T12:39:00.000-06:00

and a short clip from the film:

Meanwhile in Greece

2007-03-01T17:59:00.000-06:00

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) -- A 2,200-year-old statue of the goddess Hera has been found built into the walls of a city under Mount Olympus, home of Greece's ancient gods, archaeologists said on Thursday. The headless marble statue was discovered last year during excavations in the ruins of ancient Dion, some 53 miles southwest of Thessaloniki.

Danielewski anyone?

2007-03-01T16:39:00.000-06:00

I haven't read either of Mark Z Danielewski's novels (House of Leaves and Only Revolutions). I've only skimmed through them at the bookstore. In my skimming, I was somewhat repulsed by the confusing form (or lack thereof) that the novels took, but my curiousity was piqued. So I inquire to you, dear readers (and any of the POLYSEMY crew), to see if any of you have read either of these novels, or pieces of them, or even if you haven't, but you have an opinion to share. I would love to hear what people think of these books.

Breaking news

2007-02-27T21:21:00.000-06:00

... from the Onion.

Modern silent film?

2007-02-24T05:38:00.000-06:00

From this article on wired.com:

The [modern silent film Passio] is one of the most recent and ambitious in a revival of silent film -- a medium killed nearly 80 years ago by advances in sound recording. Over the past two decades, artists have explored the legacy of silent cinema, not as a dusty anachronism but as a rich medium from which lessons about music, performance and art can be drawn.

This makes me giddy. I've always thought that film's main weakness is it's lack of the electric aliveness that a live performance has. Film is repeatable, especially in today's world. If you miss a movie while it's in the theater, you can always see it when it comes out on DVD, and you can even push the pause button when you need to get the popcorn out of the microwave. But with silent film accompanied by live music, you kinda get the best of both worlds (but, alas, at the price of the pause button).

I would love to see this trend grow. If for no other reason than to provide a new (well, new to us) context for live music.

What Every Artist Needs Is...

2007-02-23T01:07:00.000-06:00

An Action Figure of course.

I'm kinda partial to Oscar Wilde.

But alternately, you could go with the Bard. Or what about these for your musician, painter, or all around Renaissance person. You can check them all out here.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali lecture

2007-02-19T16:14:00.000-06:00

Audio and video of her recent lecture is here. Once at the linked page, see upper right-hand corner for audio/video. From the event description:

The brutal murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 shocked the world. Shot and mutilated by an Islamic fanatic as he cycled to work, it was a stark reminder of the dangers of challenging an extreme Islamic worldview. It also changed the life of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, van Gogh's collaborator on Submission, the controversial film that had offended his murderer.

Born in Somalia and raised a Muslim, Hirsi Ali escaped an arranged marriage and made a new life as a Dutch parliamentarian, championing the reform of Islam and its attitude toward women's rights. Now a resident fellow at AEI, she refuses to let threats from extremists inhibit her willingness to speak out.

In her autobiography, Infidel, Hirsi Ali recounts her extraordinary transition from a third-world upbringing to her current status as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world, Infidel is as gripping as it is inspiring. Join us as Hirsi Ali talks about her life story and women’s rights in Islam.

Can we retire Bill Moyers, now?

2007-02-16T16:41:00.000-06:00

I'm on an email list that informed me about a recent speech by Bill Moyers, of PBS fame. If one is an unreconstructed progressive, this speech will likely appeal. Since I'm not, this speech mostly irritated me. Here's how I responded to the email list:

I would disagree that Moyers' perspective here is worth much. On the big points — that the arts and humanities, and of course PBS and thus one of his jobs, ought be on the federal dole; that, by implication, democracy itself depends upon such; that arguments against this funding are only arguments against the value of the arts and humanities — these in Moyers' formulation, all too typical of him and this pseudo-elite, "I can save you!" attitude, are at best specious. The arts, deep thought, and liberty flourished quite nicely before the winds of a bloated State got involved, thank you very much.

I do appreciate the link to the article, though; for inspiration and reminder as to just how much has to change in this country for there to be a genuine renewal of artistry and deep thought. It starts as it always has: by not passing the buck.

And I should add the only other good aspect of the speech is that it mentions Mortimer Adler, one of the greatest American philosophers. And, in my estimation, one of only a handful of true scholar/patrons of classical/integral artistry. See here for a short but potent article by Adler that, in my view, is a valuable seed for renewed artistry.