Too good for the average man

In 2021 the American Booksellers Association, a trade association that promotes independent bookstores, , sent out, among a number of other titles, promotional copies of Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage. While this is a routine practice, it drew immediate and scathing criticism from trans activists. Immediately, the ABA apologized for this violation, while admitting that "apologies are not enough." The form their penance should take was an ongoing discussion.

Just this past week, London's Wellcome Collection, a museum dedicated to the history of science and medicine, shuttered its longstanding Medicine Man exhibit on the grounds that it "told a global story of health and medicine in which disabled people, black people, indigenous peoples, and people of color were exoticised, marginalized, and exploited—or even missed out altogether.”

These are two separate incidents on different sides of the Atlantic in different fields. But what they and other recent events have in common is that decisions have been made with no input from the general public. Leaders of these institutions are in a private conversation with activists and no one else, regardless of who their decisions affect. Whether this is a matter of affinity or cowardice is up for debate. Except, of course, you know, debate is bad.

Cultural institutions like museums and bookstores are supposed to form the bedrock of civic culture. Civic culture is supposed to be for everyone. But one or both of these premises have been eroded. The institutions don't want to see or hear from anyone outside of their clique. So where does that leave us?

Dee & Dum

Coagulopath has a new post up dealing with two schools of thought known as rockism and poptimism. For the uninitiated, rockism can be attributed to any gasser who claims there's been no good music recorded since 1974. Poptimism holds that music is getting better all the time, just like everything else, but/and that the only worthwhile music is what adheres to current top 40 production standards, whatever they may be.

One problem with criticism in general is that critics often have agendas that don't serve―or in some cases, allow for―creative expression. This is especially true when they have some theory or manifesto to promote. Poptimism and rockism are both basically conformist ideologies with no patience for the strange and unexpected, i.e. where the action actually is. Take note that they exist, then carry on with your business.

Fluid motion

This animation is, per the creator, made out of monotype prints. Monotypes are single prints made from a liquid medium―usually watercolor or ink―being applied to glass or metal. Using them to make a moving image sounds tricky, and I'm sure it is. The animation here is fairly simple, just a bear walking. Could the process be used to do a full storyline? Interesting question. It's an attractive piece, anyway.

Pieces

 

On loan from the library now is The 21st Century Art Book from Phaidon. It's from 2014, so while some things have changed since then (some forever, none for better) it is deep enough into the new century to be somewhat representative. 

The format is simple. Each page has an artwork reproduced on it, along with biographical info about the artist and a description of their work.

I'm looking at the pictures, obviously. Some things don't really translate, in a way you can judge, like videos and performance pieces. And I'm reading the text. But then I'm disregarding it. Looking, thinking, feeling: this is where you get impressions that are worth something. There's subjectivity, some things that hit a responsive chord with you more than others. But that's how to find what things might make a workable aesthetic going forward. Prattle about how so-and-so "deals with issues of gender, exploitation, and performance" and the like doesn't really tell you anything.

(Above: Geoffrey Farmer, The Surgeon and the Photographer)

Open questions

Okay, so I have opinions. Anyone who glances at this blog could probably figure that out. Still, I think it's important to remember that three word sentence: "I don't know." Having a final judgment on everything isn't necessary, or even desirable. Just poring through can be enough.

The eyes, of course, have it

There's something I've noticed, although I'm sure I'm not the first. This is a closeup of a dog's eye.

And this is a closeup of a cat's eye.

Notice that the dog's eye is very similar to a human eye. Larger iris and less white, but the elements are all the same. The cat's eye is something else again. A field of color too big to even be called an iris, really, and a vertically elongated pupil. 

There are dog people and cat people, of course. But regardless of which, if either, they prefer, people tend to be familiar with dogs. They're more intimidated by cats. I wonder if the stranger albeit beautiful eyes have something to do with that.

It's also weird that they diverge like that. They are, of course, more related to each other than to us. (Fun fact: we're in the same superorder as rats and bunnies.) It would make a great story to say that dogs have evolved to look more like us in the longer time that they've been domesticated. But wolves have human-ish eyes as well, so that's not really it.

Herd and scene

Hopefully this essay by Matthew Gasda doesn't get paywalled before you have a chance to read it. Not that I'd necessarily begrudge them, because this one is quite good. 

Gasda is a playwright himself, somewhat avant-garde, so he knows whereof he speaks. Something has gone deeply wrong in the creative fields.

Regimes of biosurveillance, integrated into culture, destroy culture from within. I feel the way about many bookstores that I do about theaters. At least in New York, where I live, they have lost their magic, and are no longer worth lingering in. Covid gave cultural institutions license to act like institutions, to exercise control for the sake of control over whoever comes through the doors, charging more, providing less.

And I think it's worth unpacking exactly where and when things started to slip. So to take another example. McSweeney's Internet Tendency is a site/webzine I always used to enjoy. Filled with leftfield humor pieces and some thoughtful essays, some of which I believe I've linked on this blog. But the last couple of years the tone there has seemed more rigid, obsessed with being right-thinking.

As in so many places, COVID-19 had a deadening effect. But the problem started earlier. I think for a lot of artistic venues and ventures it was a perfect storm of Trump, COVID, and the post-Floyd racial reckoning, all of which exacerbated some kind of malaise that was already in the air. Certainly when Trump hatred went from an eccentric New York hobby―as it had been pretty much since the disco era―to a national mission we all got sucked into some horrible Manhattan vortex.

Beyond that...Well, from my personal perspective, I'm an appreciator of the strange, the quirky, the―to use the term again―avant-garde. And it would be nice to think that other people who appreciate these things, as well as all those who create them, also have an appreciation for the free, spontaneous side of human nature. But it's become ever more clear that artistic folk are quite capable of being conformist, even authoritarian. And when you bring administrators into the picture, well...

It's also bad, I think, to have a "no enemies to the left" policy, since you have no idea what will be considered "left" in five minutes.

Mired

The prestige-y thing to do in TV now is serialization. When you hear shows being talked about, it's almost always in the context of an ongoing plot. Doing something different every week is déclassé. Which is counterintuitive in a way because now we have a couple of generations whose attention span is taxed by a three minute YouTube video, but there are always exceptions. 

I think there are severe shortcomings to this approach. There's something appealing about, say, Columbo facing a new killer each week. If this week's episode appeals to you then you can see if the writers can match it next week. If not, at least there's a chance for something better. Heavily serialized TV, by contrast, says, "Is this working for you? Don't care, we're sticking with it."

That's one of the things I've thought about watching The Devil's Hour, a British thriller series that in some ways feels like an attempt to do True Detective: UK. I started watching because it features Peter Capaldi, who was Peter Riegert's boyish sidekick in Local Hero years ago and has more recently starred on Doctor Who. There's a certain sacrilegious frisson to his character, the concept basically being, "What if the Doctor was a violent drifter with some intense beliefs?" He doesn't show up that much, though.

The cast is overall good, but not enough to cover up the holes. Lead actress Jessica Raine, for example, plays a social worker who's also screwing her ex-husband in an attempt to make him love their autistic son. This doesn't work, and how could it? The fact that she seems to think it will if she keeps trying makes her look dense.

But the problem is really how the drama game is played now. You have to watch every episode just to find out what's going on, and if enough people sign on for this maybe you'll get another season to be baffled about something else.

Flying

 

Interesting story behind this song. Paul Simon has mostly written both the music and lyrics of his own songs. "El Condor Pasa" is a very rare case of his providing lyrics for a previously existing melody. He heard the Peruvian group Los Incas playing it and was taken with the melody, for good reason. He provided English lyrics in collaboration with them.

Later he got sued by the family of the original composer, Daniel Alomia Robles, for not crediting him. Simon had been under the impression that it was a traditional tune, the author lost in the mists of time. 

It all got settled amicably. It's good that he got the music to a wider audience, any which way.

Web sight

 

Now here's something I just saw tonight, and don't at all regret the time spent.

A lawyer (Edmond O'Brien) shows tenacity in a case against a wealthy businessman (Vincent Price.) The businessman, impressed, hires the lawyer. But not as a lawyer, as a bodyguard. Apparently there's a man out there who just got out of prison for stealing from the company and he blames poor widdle Vincent for ruining his life? Can you believe such a silly thing? Anyway, the lawyer finds himself killing this man in a shootout, which rouses the suspicion of his detective friend. (William Bendix). And he needs to pump the businessman's among-other-things secretary (Ella Raines) to get to the bottom of the case.

This is the basic plot of The Web, a 1947 Universal Pictures thriller. Price had already mastered the balancing act of being charming and nasty. The rest of the cast is quite good too. O'Brien is obviously pulling Bogart mannerisms, but it works for the part. It unfolds in a very tight, stylish way as well. Free on Archive.org. 

Can such things be?

For whatever reason―my thought processes are quirky―I Googled Arcade Fire today. After I put in the search I was reminded that their freakishly tall front man is under some scrutiny and, dare I say it, opprobrium right now. Over what? I may have read somewhere and forgotten exactly what it is, but I don't find it interesting enough to look into again.

But anyway, what it was that reminded me of this was seeing a headline that asked the question (wording as best as I can remember it) "Is it possible to be a poet and a scumbag?" 

Now, there's a lot you could say about this question. What I would say is that it sounds like something you'd ask if you could number all the poets you've heard of on one hand. Do any reading on the marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and it's impossible to route for either of them because they were both objectively awful. The world would have been a much poorer place without their work, though.

Winging it

Penguins are native not just to Antarctica but to the Southern Ocean as a whole. The  people Māori of New Zealand have long been familiar with them. Another interesting tidbit about them is that anatomically speaking, they're not flightless. Not airborne, but their motion in the water has more in common with flying than what we consider swimming. As Art Wolfe puts it in his book Penguins, Puffins, And Auks: 

The fact that penguins fly through the water, and do not just paddle, is easily confirmed by a glance at their skeletal structure and musculature. Flying birds are the most specialized of all invertebrates [sic]. To provide support for the wings, their backbones have been fused into nearly rigid rods, to anchor the large muscles needed to move those wings, and to keep the center of gravity low in the body, their breastbones have been provided with an immense, jutting, blade-shape addition to the sternum known as the keel. Truly flightless birds such as the ostrich and the emu have lost their keels, or at best have only rudimentary ones. Penguins' keels are large and solid.

Penguins are, of course, very well adapted to where they live―while not exclusively Antarctic, they do favor cooler climates―and to how they live. Their grace in the water demonstrates that.

Balmy

It's gotten above 60F during the day the last couple of days. If the weather widget on my laptop is to be believed it's 66F now. It feels cooler than that, but the real cool days of autumn are taking their time getting here.

One thing I can be pleased about is that the high-allergy period seems to have passed. Hope I didn't just jinx it.

How nice

This is an excellent article by Mary Harrington. The main topic is an Atlantic article proposing (cajoling?) amnesty for COVID maximalists. While I may have more to say on that subject later on, I currently want to direct your attention to the final sentence. 

"Kindness is everything" actually is one of the adages listed on those lawn signs that are ubiquitous in blue states and cities. And a lot of people dot their Instagram/Twitter bios and Facebook signatures with "Be kind" and instructions of that nature.

Adopting "kindness" as your guiding political principle seems unwise to me. If everything you believe in can be reduced to kindness, you're justified in doing just about anything, to promote it, right? Pretty soon your allegiance to kindness relieves you of the responsibility of actually being kind in your daily interactions. Bombs away.

So keep mum and do something.

Hats off to (Roy) G. Biv

 

Seen above are a representation of the visible light spectrum and the color wheel. They overlap, but there are a couple of telling differences.

For one thing, we pick up as children that the three primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. And when you're mixing finger paints or crayons, that certainly checks out. Then when you're older, at least if you take a physics class, you find out that green is the other primary color, and yellow is one of the secondary colors. It's kind of a shock.

But that's on top of what may be an even stranger phenomenon. The color wheel tells us that red and violet/purple are right next to each other, aptly enough since there's a red component to purple. But red and violet lie at opposite ends of the spectrum. How can this be?

The answer comes down to the difference between sensation and perception. The spectrum is an expression of the frequencies of visible light, which may be sensed by the cones in our eyes. But frequencies aren't something that affects us, at least not in a way we know about. So our perceptual brains modify the information in a way we find more useful and pleasing.

One interesting hypothetical: What if our vision were altered so that we could see a low-frequency color in the ultraviolet spectrum, but not red? I believe it would still fill that niche on the wheel between orange and violet, in place of the absent red. But would it be red? No. For one thing, because of where its higher place on the spectrum, it would present to us as a cool, receding color rather than a warm, advancing one.