Trust the Art and Not the Artist

Apropos of the previous post, I wanted to write something about this principle I learned in school, one of those basic principles for a whole discipline that is also strangely descriptive of human life or behavior in a more general way.

So I studied a lot of history and read a lot of books in school, its obvious from my writing, if you know nothing else about me.  I actually got two B.A.s and a minor in my four and a half years, not that either B.A. is of any value.  In addition to the History degree most people know about, I also got a degree in a department called Comparative Literature, which sounds even more like bullshit than History, right?  What it actually is, and should just be called, for the sake of graduates, just so people fucking know what they studied, is Art Criticism, pure and simple, because what they mean by comparative is contextualizing a piece of art, let's just say a book, for the sake of argument, in the wider thought atmosphere of all culture contemporary to the artist at the time of the piece's creation.  So you're saying what this song meant, not just to music, but to painting at the same time.  How does Edouard Manet sitting and smoking cigarettes with Marcel Proust, his lifelong friend, influence the perspective of the two famous artists?  What do they share?  What do they argue about?  What do they go round and round about, one convincing the other before having his own mind ultimately changed by something his friend said?  What are they working on in their studios when they have the argument?  How does the human story produce the meaning of the 'Objet d'Art' (as it's called)?

So the basic principle I wanted to discuss comes from this discipline, which stresses the factual nature of beauty, even if its description is elusive.  It's the aphorism I used to head this post, that when there comes a time when a literary interpretation of the piece comes into contention with something the artist themself said about their art, or even about the individual piece itself, in looking for the meaning of the art, you trust the art and not the artist.

This is weird, right?  So if John fucking Lennon's corporeal spirit tells you that Imagine is an imperialist anthem meant as a call to arms to go out and conquer the brown people and drive the yellow ones out into space, you can look him in the eye and tell him, "That's all very well and good, John, but the world read it the other way: the meaning that made it art is the pacifist, compassionate love message that derives from a straightforward reading."  Yes, this means that artists can be (and often are) completely wrong about the actual meaning of their own art.  This also means that, for all cultural intents and purposes, a song that has as wide a distribution as Sympathy for the Devil speaks through the actual voice of the devil.  It tells us things we don't want to hear (Anastasia screamed in vain), that even the men on the tanks (the heroes, even the anti-hero, Rommel, of WWII) are symbols of the darker side of man triumphant, and that, lastly of all, maybe, just maybe, its the villain we should be the more concerned about, extending our concern, our investigative reporting, and our care to the guy who came up feeling hard-done-by in a world that doesn't have to be that way.

But that doesn't mean that what the artist thinks or intends or says doesn't matter at all.  In terms of contextualizing and opening a window on how the art is made, the artist's testimony is essential, its only in terms of that final decision on meaning, when all is said and done, and the conflicting, cross-cutting influences have all been weighed, and a social or cultural interpretation must be made, that the rule-of-thumb defaults you toward the interpretive meaning over the stated one.  It puts substantial pressure on the social scientist/humanist doing the interpreting to use very solid theoretical analysis of the symbolism of the objets, but what it comes down to is whether or not you accept that social and cultural realities are as solid a set of laws governing human behavior as physics.  If you do, then you can contextualize many choices, or rule out motivations, based on when the art was created.  An artist can claim that a fortunate coincidence in symbols with another popular icon was intentional, but if the documentable history shows that they did not or could not have known about the symbol at the time the scene was shot, or whatever the art was, you can say for sure that the symbol was put in there for a different reason.  It's likely, however, that the independent choice of two iconic artists to use the same symbol comes from some deeper seated cultural focusing on symbols like it.

Do you see how it works?  The artist says it was just a publicity stunt, look at me, look how smart I am.  The art itself says it wasn't a publicity stunt, he just had a seagull's shadow on the sidewalk for fifteen seconds at the beginning of his music video because he thought the camera shot was badass when they were taping and made sure it ended up in the video.  But from knowing that it was coincidental, we can then say something deeper about the sea-bird, silhouetted on concrete as a symbol for how the society at large wanted to be spoken to at the time, for what feelings and emotions were making connections with audiences.

In a way, since art is a pure distillation of action into value, it's as much as to say that actions speak louder than words, but I think it goes farther, in that it says that even the most studied, sometimes elaborate actions can speak for you in spite of yourself, by signaling subconsciously, and saying things you believe, but never intended to give voice.  And more than that, that what you say or do can mean, to a large number of people, and mean, to the vast majority of them, something entirely unrelated to what it means to you.  Not to just start pulling down famous quotes, but I'm now also reminded of the Gladiator line, "what we do in life, echoes for eternity."  Our actions really do have a butterfly effect on the future, and most of that effect comes from our perception in the eyes of other people.

Trust the art means that, even though what makes art meaningful may be what the artist was thinking when they wrote it, what makes art art, what makes it beautiful, is the reaction it causes the auditor, the interpretation.  There is no art without the perceiver, the audience.  If you allow the projector to give all of the meaning to a piece, simply because they gave it shape, then you silence your own voice expressed in seeing something in the piece and responding to it.  You do not have to respond to it.  I was going to say art, 'you do not have to respond to art,' but that's not true.  You can ignore it, dislike it, be unimpressed by it or whathaveyou, but art causes a reaction.  What you do not have to do is validate every glob of acrylic and pigment slapped on an old rag and called art by reacting to it.  IF its art, and if you're letting it happen, it will cause a reaction.  If it is not, then hopefully its at least pretty.

One Question

A lot of people used to talk about (until someone wrote a song about it) their one, most important question for the Judeo-Christian God.  I've always had just one for the "Devil."  That question would be: "I understand courtesy, and I obviously understand taste, but tell me about sympathy, who are you to need sympathy?"

I mean, it's not as if I do not understand the psychology of abuse and something of psychosis. Enough to know that, as the dominated in an abusive relationship with the deity who psychologically raped Abraham, not to mention Issac, who killed all of humanity then threatened never to do it again with an iconic reminder, whose commandments include "no one may be jealous but me," (I'm sorry, did I mistranslate that?  I meant "You can't worship anyone but me!") the Judeo-Christian Devil would have to be psychologically pretty fucked up, and no mistake.  You cannot help but feel pity for the Judeo-Christian Devil (and I use this label with the understanding that the devil is a mystical anti-god in 'Hebrew' mythology, not an official part of the story in the Old Testament), but feeling pity for the devil, however sentimentally evocative his story of abuse and ostracization may be, does not earn him my sympathy.

Sympathy means that I see things your way for a moment.  Assuming that mythology is being treated as factual to the point of there being a specifically Abrahamic, single, all-encompassing anti-deity, then this being's actions in Job alone, the Hebrew Bible being the single historically 'reliable' volume of the Abrahamic bibles, makes him no better than the proper god Yaweh, you remember, the abusive father.  Its like you're watching that Eddie Murphy/Dan Aykroyd (sp?) movie Trading Places, and, just because they happen to be two rich guys, you say to yourself, well, I have to marry one of them, they're rich.  No thought for the fact that there might be other rich people (other deities) out there, we're stuck with either Randolph or Mortimer.  No reason, we just decided that Mortimer's edict that we pretend no one else is rich but them was worth accepting.  And Mortimer's a little better than Randolph, right?  I mean, he's in charge at least, and Randolph is his little Grey Eminence, ruthlessly playing the adversary to all of Mortimer's marginally more just rule.

No, I'm not prepared to have sympathy for the devil, not without him going on trial, arguing his case for me, submitting his actual behavior to my judgement.  If he deserves my sympathy, it will not be because he has convinced me with his silver tongue that 'god' is really the evil one.  They're both assholes, from all appearances, the question could only be whether there is any moral ambivalence at all anywhere in the objective actions and consequences of others and of fate and physics, however physics operates on deities.  I'm prepared to believe that it is entirely possible that Yaweh is the real villain in the personal rivalry between the two, I've pointed out that he's clearly a HUGE dick, based on the stories he brags about and has his disciples write down.  IF that 'real' story is in fact as bad as it seems perfectly plausible that it could be, then, and only then, would I be willing to meet the Judeo-Christian Devil with sympathy, courtesy and taste.

The Three Musketeers, Part II: Dumas and Misogyny

So, sadly, there is more to write about the charming little French novel I recommended to readers a few days ago.  It turns out, this funny little comedy has a rather gruesome ending, with an administration of state-sanctioned capital punishment the ultimate expression of justice and a free France.  Of course, French style, the capital punishment is a beheading, though not with a guillotine, yet, obviously.

This, however, is not the reason why the 'serious' portion of the comedia merited a second post so soon after the first.  The justice is unfortunately served against a woman, whose original crime, the thing which set her off on a feedback loop of growing ostracization and criminalization, is that at age fourteen or sixteen or so she, a young, whip-smart, bombshell French blonde, 'placed' in a Catholic convent as a novice, fucked a seminary student.  That's her ultimate crime, the thing which caused Athos to attempt to hang her; that, rightly or wrongly, prejudiced her English husband's brother toward thinking she'd poisoned the English husband; that puts her in a position where only ruthless obedience to Cardinal Richelieu buys her the privacy to live the life a bombshell twenty-five-year-old, widowed French noblewoman could normally expect to have, assuming she'd escaped convent life.

Here's the story, and remember, that enough of the children's movie is from the book to keep you current with the plot.  Milady de Winter was not actually tried for the theft that led to her branding, it was her lover, who, apparently, took it upon himself to steal valuables from the church of the convent they were trying to escape who was caught, tried and branded for the theft.  The lover's brother, who happens to be the local executioner, and charged with such punishments as branding a fleur de lis on thieves' shoulders, finds her, ties her up and brands her vigilante style, as revenge for having corrupted his brother.

What's a little repulsive about the whole thing--and remember, judging Dumas, while forgetting that he's a Catholic, during the counter-reformation, who's affirming his Catholic faith all the while declaring his political independence from its church, is what's called 'anachronistic' in the study of history, meaning that it's not exactly fair.  What's a little repulsive anyways, is that this is taken to justify all of the other crimes that are heaped upon her in what is, after all, because she's a spy and they have to try her by the old laws of chivalry and execute the beheading before the cardinal can get wind of it and reverse the gears of French justice, a kangaroo court.

Now, keep in mind, this woman has poisoned D'Artagnan's mistress not two days before, and that with the dying woman's word for testimony, which even an American court, today, would accept into evidence.  She's guilty and dead to rights on a capital crime, and she's the only villain in the book who's not an historical figure that Dumas can kill off whenever it pleases him.  But its makes the boring part of the novel that much more difficult to read that this woman, who might honestly be called more a victim than a perpetrator of crimes up, at least, until her marriage to the Count de Winter, gets piled up with these misogynistic, male-sexual-insecurity-rooted accusations for the commission of a crime natural to animal behavior.

Athos, especially, who has persecuted her for six or seven years, based on this brand, which has no legal basis, for a crime that she, herself, did not actually commit, however much the author makes it clear that, for the purposes of the actual character, she would believably have been encouraging the seminarian, even manipulating him into it, falls deeply in your esteem as he presides over her capital punishment for a second time.

I guess I still give the book an over all positive recommendation, I mean, anachrony and all, but its sad about how Athos comes out looking...

Alexandre Dumas and Nationalism

So, I've been reading the three musketeers on my phone, lately, and its awesome, hilarious, fun, a little raunchy and very French. The funniest thing about the whole book is that, although its about an affaire d'honneur that becomes a oneupsmanship race between the cardinal and this young, upstart Gascon boy, with the Gascon winning (forgetting the boy). All along however, if you already know the story, which of course, everyone misknows in the movie generation, you realize that in the original story, pre-children's movie adaptations, the honor involved is the Queen's, but in a very French, marry-for-money-love-a-lover sort of way, so that all of these tit-for-tat, public rivalries, some of them deadly, and all of which make up the very real fight that is going on just then over Nationalism, are set against a background of a life or death battle to get the Queen of France LAID! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Shaft of light, choir of angels, the whole nine yards.

So this fight, Nationalism, for those who don't know the whole story, at the time, was about whether one was going to be loyal to one's ethnic, supreme ruler, or one's own ethnic nation alone and independent, which is essentially the way to look at the reformation, as an ethnic split in Europe, with Protestants, ironically, more loyal to English interests than Spain or France ever were to Roman power. Nationhood, however, was the epic battle of the day, and if you're going to write the great French novel, you write it about one man, fighting the odds and the power of Rome. The marriage between the French king and a very desirable Spanish Habsburg princess was a tense one, but it was an important source of independent cooperation between Spain, Austria and France against Italy, and a direct line of succession is the best way to keep the sovereignty stable enough for all of the little moves that make up a grassroots struggle against an authority as far-reaching as the Catholic church.  Fights like those that D'Artagnan fights, the little punk Bernajoux, who is responsible for picking many of the fights between Cardinalists and King's men (i.e. Musketeers) in Paris, the haughty Count, who works for the cardinal in a capacity to have permission to cross the channel when a port is sealed, even the greedy, relatively rich commoner, his landlord. So if the French king cannot, in fact, be induced to conceive a child with the queen, and since all of the nobility of Europe is a single, extended family at the time anyways, it is no matter to nationalists who the crown prince's father is, so long as the world never truly knows, and the child is raised to think of France as his country, his birthright.

In The Man in the Iron Mask, Dumas underlines this exact point again, by taking for a king a man who has been imprisoned by the prior King of France all his life, but in France, by Frenchmen. In the end, like the dirt poor Gascon, who has nothing but his title and his father's hideous, barely marketable horse, he naturally sides with his homeland, and his people, which give the Gascon a much greater chance of social mobility, and represents the freedom so long denied to the new king, who knows little of religion, only has thoughts on right and wrong. It does not matter who is King of France, Dumas is saying, so long as he is French, first of all, and more or less just, second of all.

So it's funny every time D'Artagnan sets off on another super secret undercover mission.  This is when he's most like the don Quijote that Dumas compares him to, the farcical figure who imagines windmills on a distant hill to be giants and charges headlong, but in the end, he is actually doing something productive for the Nationalist cause.  It's funny and so very French, and if you're nerd enough to appreciate the irony, and remember all along that D'Artagnan is a ridiculous figure, it's a laugh aloud read.

No Peas

The last affordable grocery store between the Oakland border and the North Berkeley BART, excepting the Grocery Outlet on University two blocks from the freeway, closed for the last time 20 minutes ago. I know they just rebuilt the north Berkeley Safeway, and maybe they're planning to do the same thing down here, but until such time, only rich people (Whole Foods and Berkeley Bowl customers) are able to shop for a full selection of dairy, fresh produce, frozen foods and meats (especially pork products) in south Berkeley.

Wave Again

So, a few days ago, as I was writing the cover letter for that East Bay Express job, I overheard a woman talking to her friend, apparently about her son or daughter (the story that follows makes me think son) as if they were just a lazy good-for-nothing freeloader who was not in school because his mother told him it was what he must do, and did not have the slightest understanding of the meaning of hard work. This, as students on their summer break work feverishly around her at 1 o'clock on a Friday and she sips coffee and bitches to a friend. She caught my attention with a tone of righteous mockery, saying something like, "...and he goes, that sounds like third wave feminism..." clearly skeptical of the very existence or certainly the accuracy of such a categorization. I get it. I'd never heard of "third wave feminism" growing up raised by a third wave feminist (and her Suffrage/Women's Lib mother), and in point of fact, the very term itself is confusing and obfuscating, because if the third wave is essentially the elderstateswomen of the women's lib era and their proteges of the eighties and nineties (and that, to the best of my understanding is what merits the name), then it's really the fourth wave. Right? I mean, I'm a dude, but Seneca Falls is a wave of its own, Suffrage is a generation later, lumped with the depression, and Women's Lib is after the war and into Vietnam. Right? I mean, can we get it straight, please? I can understand how "third wavers" would rather not be pinned down, it's been their modus for thirty years now, "that's not what I said," "who are you to ask that question," and so forth, but unfortunately their children have been hearing those lines for thirty years. If "third" is the first word a substantial number of women scholars have ever voluntarily used to self-label, then we'll take third regardless of the reason you want to obfuscate the uniqueness of your ideology. Because that's really what this was about, that lady's denial of categorization, the misnomer label, used to cause confusion about just what constitutes a "third wave feminist," its about not wanting to be distinguished from earlier, successful movements because the inevitability of women gaining suffrage and thence moving into the workforce in a federated republic felt like momentum that should be tapped, that the image of inevitability would go a long way in creating the inevitability of a world according to Gloria Steinem. It was the Hillary Clinton strategy for winning the presidency. But here's the thing. Gloria Steinem did a couple of wonderful things, half a century ago. But Gloria Steinem is a bitch. And contrary to a recent Tina Fey meme I've seen going around, bitches do not get shit done, bitches get one or two things done, then everyone around them is too alienated to work with, for, or even in charge of them. Which makes "third wave" sort of ironic, really, since its the third thing, the third goal, the one that, whatever it should have been, won't get accomplished because the feminist movement turned into the Bitch Movement for the eighties and nineties. Its no coincidence that the label that "third wave" is meant to substitute for, academically, is "femme nazi," women who didn't want to be labeled certainly did not want to be labeled with that moniker for eternity, and 'we,' the academy, that good old boys club, accommodated with the first thing that was even slightly acceptable. And that's the real thing, that nothing substantial does distinguish the third wave strategically or tactically except for the bitchy attitude, and as some idiot trying to "take back the word" on Political Animals, that shitty send up of Clinton family drama that I watched hoping it would be another West Wing, said, "Never call a bitch a bitch, us bitches hate that." But here's the thing, those bitches are just a bunch of bitches, they don't have a point, you don't have to listen to their idiocy, because somewhere (I just know it) there is a rational woman, and you can always count on at least, like, twenty percent of all women to be in lucid windows of rationality at any given moment (that's a joke, get it?). No, you don't have to listen to their shit because no one else wants to hear their shit. Don't tell the bitch she's a bitch, tell the fucking world, and the world will respond "right on! You're right, man, fuck that bitch," and then she'll really hate that, because she'll be as powerless as she's always felt. Ok, I'm just gonna start spit-balling names for a new "wave" here, now, if I don't come up with many now I'll edit them in later or do another post: Fivers, um...Environmental Feminism, Gender Fusion, I don't know, I'm getting off topic. Bitch, is not the only thing worthy of critique about their ideology, its just the only real reason they've been shrinking instead of growing for the first time in a century. These are the assumptions that, of course, no group wishes to examine, and which the "third wavers" have successfully used to escape scrutiny by never publishing a crystallizing ideological manifesto. We all know the mantras however. I've already discussed the one about "All men think about is sex," (cliffsnotes: the reality is that sex is something that men are always thinking about, but even the human male's mind can hold more than that single, simple thought, at one time) Another, which I have to deal with in my thesis, is the refusal to accept anthropological explanations for social behaviors, the refusal to believe that discipline of mind and training from birth cannot overcome all inborn instincts, and the ridiculous belief that we would even want to do such a thing to our kids. Of course, with my thesis, the problem is a, you guessed it, third wave feminist, objecting to my application of this assumption to feminists broadly. I told him, I have worked through a simple argument, premise by premise with a woman my own age of a decidedly third-wave outlook, got buy in, at great effort, having to change the subject back to my argument, multiple times, but finally had buy in on every single minor and major premise, in sequence, without interruption. When I proposed the inevitable logical conclusion, this young woman flatly refused to acknowledge it, having no refutation, no rational argument at all. You're telling me that a student who is that adamantly irrational regarding a single point, who was intelligent enough for me to work through the logic piece by piece, knowing she could follow it, is not doing so according to an ideological belief? What about the scholar from my own literature. I did not have to depart my own literature to find an almost verbatim reprise of the point I refute in the thesis, and this from a scholar I agree with on every assertion she makes, I just disagree with her on this philosophical assertion she makes in the introduction to her article. The one female scholar after 1950 I agree with, I think. Of course, there's only one before 1950, and none before 1985 on my part of Africa. I'll end the post with a book recommendation, especially for women aspiring to be anthropologists or archaeology. Gertrude Caton-Thompson, with a woman photographer and a woman ethnologist, excavated The Great Zimbabwe in the 1930's, and was the first person to confirm beyond doubt the sequence of exclusively indigenous builders. Her report is the most professional, informative and straightforward example of the archaeologist's trade I have ever read (although my experience is limited to Africa, that's not insubstantial), and she's a BADASS. Not a bitch, but a fucking badass.

Help Wanted

Male human seeking female human being. Am perfectly capable of cleaning, feeding, driving and providing for my sustenance on a daily basis, as well as fixing broken things, building or assembling from poor plans, taking blame for bad ideas or missed plans, etc. Somehow can't figure out doing laundry or dishes on a consistent basis and can't find the motivation to clean my room but once a month.

On Media

So I'm writing today in honor of the East Bay Express, which posted a writing job on craigslist I'd love to get. I mentioned that I'm from SoCal, that I read the LA Times, and that I've been disappointed with both the SF Chronicle and the Oakland Trib and I wanted to write about what, as a reader, makes a newspaper worth reading, especially in print. Every time I get far enough south to catch a print copy of the LA Times, I find at least one article that impresses me with the editors' willingness to depart from traditional journalistic objectivity, not for the purpose of editorializing, as the Chronicle's journalists will happily do above the fold on the front page, but to offer deeper, sophisticated information on a complex or controversial topic, objectively, but with a serene confidence in the quantifiable truth of scientific conclusions and modern knowledge. The LA Times is not an outlet for conspiracy theorists or blowhards making more of their tiny, isolated little concern than it merits within the political movement it belongs to. Don't get me wrong, the editorial board is clearly far more conservative than its readership, and it engages in not-too-subtle, cynical attempts at mind control, like publishing in detail on every perceived gaffe by Barack Obama and giving every Hillary Clinton New Hampshire field office opening six-inches more than it deserved, while ignoring Clinton gaffes and Obama press releases alike. I wrote a letter to the editors about the coverage of the Occupy camp outside city hall, L.A. The letter lambasted politicians and newspapers alike for focusing on the $700,000 cost of replacing grass in a city park (done with one-third native growth, BTW, and looks more beautiful than before the protest) over the uncounted billions at stake to the general public if banks are allowed to continue over-leveraging and over-consolidating. I noted that the banks were a revenue stream both for the politicians themselves and for the papers, in which they advertise. When the paper printed my letter, it delivered my message faithfully, but with all idea of a media role in the narrative expertly edited out, without ellipses, as if it had never been. Hell, I don't care, I'm just glad my name got printed, and I'm still sitting here using their paper as my standard of what a print-news source should be, affordable, intelligent, objective and with enough funding to actually merit world and national news bureaus. That's the thing. There are only so many worthwhile international and national journalists in this world, apparently, and with a number of them just as good or better on camera or writing for someone on camera, there are probably only enough left over for, what, six worthwhile papers with true national stature? I doubt that many. Certainly, if you're not going to invest in the editing and journalists to compete to be one of those six, you're much better off just buying your news from the Associated Press and focusing on what a newspaper is really meant to be, the cultural touchstone, the community voice expressing the view and the concerns of the average reader, publishing their questions, concerns and divergent views when an issue really gets in their heads. Local papers should just be local papers. Just because your editorial board has pretensions that they, or their city, should be something more, does not excuse their wasting resources on terrible coverage just to say they have a Washington Bureau. Community newspapers are a necessity, the only thing print news still offers that digital media can't, physical community. It is a rare outlet that will be able to crystallize community over a large enough region today to stay funding a national print desk, LA, Chicago, New York. Atlanta, some Texas rag and Seattle are maybes, at best. San Francisco, sadly, has ceded this position to L.A. The world would have wanted San Fran, L.A. probably would not have fought it for long, but Bay Area residents are happy with their own insular, self-oriented attitudes. I say self-oriented, rather than self-centered, very deliberately, because its often very positively intended, this self-interest, it is merely personal, often extremely so. If you surrender the initiative for driving culture, however, you can't still try to have a relevant newspaper, because you've given up the very reason anyone would have to care about your voice. Just accept it that no one will want to buy your words outside your own area, win as many readers at home as you can, for being the best damn place to find out what's going on this weekend anywhere around, and don't waste your revenues on national news. Turn a profit. Survive. Your classified section, the comics and maybe a horoscope, the best Su Do Ku available, and the letters page. Focus on what people actually want. But there's still one thing, besides the fundamental rules at work, that makes the LA Times stand out, to me. On Tuesday, I was able to pick up a Times on my way to the Amtrak station. I didn't get to read it 'til I got into the city, because I was pleasantly diverted through most of the ride, but even on getting home at 8 pm I continued reading, because it was so refreshing to have. Now, Tuesday's Times had all of the regular trash that every other news outlet had that day. In depth bullshit on the Zimmerman trial, Monday morning quarterbacking of the BART strike, other in depth bullshit on that ex-spy asshole who can't stand up for the actions he calls heroic and tell the world why they are in court, sentimentalist trash on the firefighters in Arizona who just died. I skipped every one of those except the BART strike, stuff, something I usually don't have to do, but it was one of those banner days for shitty news, no matter what outlet you use. Inside the front section, next to the second half of the trite, paper-selling sentimentalist article on the dead firefighters from Southern California (bringing it home, even when its national news), was an article about what might have happened. It never says so, not directly, but the article very subtly makes it clear what seems to have happened. It begins by saying, matter-of-factly, and without undue emphasis, that at the time of the tragedy the fire was burning right through the middle of this town. The residents have been evacuated, and I'm making more of it than the paper did, but the fire was burning through people's homes. From there the article says that the team was fighting at the head of the fire, a direct confrontation strategy that is simply described as "rare," with no speculation whatsoever regarding why the decision may have been made to use it in this case. The article goes on to describe "proper" firefighting technique, always establishing a fall-back position of sufficient size, prior to attacking the fire lines, fighting with one foot "in the black," which the journalist translates for lay readers as, with one foot in burned-out space at the side of the fire. The article closes with direct quotes from agencies responsible for investigating the aftermaths of fire-related fatalities, and with opponents of universal investigations, one of whom points out that, in fire-fighting, the idea of holding a command entity responsible for a split-second decision that resulted in deaths minutes or hours down the road is not always right or fair. It becomes quite clear that what happened is nothing more or less than that these twenty men, only one of whom survived, made a reasoned decision, probably with universal consciousness of the risks, to skip the fall-back positions, to risk the fire head on, because people's homes were burning, that they sacrificed their safety and ultimately their lives, because that was their jobs, and when there was time to do the job safely, they did, but when people's lives are on fire, they were gonna put that job first. None of that hero worship comes through in the news article, not directly. It's just obvious, because the editors wanted it to be obvious, and the journalist wrote it well, exactly what happened, and exactly who these men were. So, to the East Bay Express; I am not trying to write that article for your paper, because that's national news, and your paper is rightly conscious of its geography and readership, but I want to write news about real things, that real people care about, that informs them of what really happened, so that without scandal, without baseless recriminations and without torture to the families of good men, the real story can get out right away, even if there aren't two sources, or even one, who will go on record to say it.

The Five Elements

It occurred to me, as I wikipedia stumbled across a debate between medieval muslim theologians and philosophers on the qur'anic verse that says the moon split, as predicted in advance by the prophet, that in a very real way, the so called five elements (*singsong* love, or really, life, being the fifth) really do describe the five things necessary to colonize another planet.

According to wikipedia, "splitting of the moon," philosophers argued that the verse could not refer to a literal splitting of the moon because, unlike the earth, the moon was not made up of all of the elements.  Now, this is not what that random ass old muslim scholar was talking about, but I got to thinking, that the reason the theory that a meteor impact had in some way made the moon look split open was not viable is because, although the moon is made up of earth, it has no fire, no molten core.  The fact that the moon also has no air or (much) water is not relevant to the splitting of the moon thing, but is absolutely true, that is what makes the moon uninhabitable, it is a rocky body, but without atmosphere, mass enough to have tectonic shifts, or liquid water.

I truly believe there is something to the idea of ancient aliens, but I do not believe in convenient space travel, so the idea of things like "the four/five elements" being an axiomatic list of the things necessary to support life on a distant planet is one of the sorts of things I credit oral traditions with being capable of preserving.

Imagine, if you will, some roughly human life somewhere in the solar system.  It is made up of DNA because DNA is such a fundamental molecule that it develops independently into the same thing instead of being built differently on every planet where life begins.  It progresses to the point where it is capable of sending small colony ships out on generations-long journeys between the stars.  When the colonists leave their own solar system they are completely on their own, without even effective means of communication, and although they propagate life in barren systems, or put humanoid colonies in "wild" systems, they inevitably would lose a lot of the social knowledge the original astronauts who lifted off from the home world would have had, especially because they would have had to devote their lives to figuring out the particularities of survival in the new world.

I don't know.  That's just my brand of crazy coming out.

The Voting Rights Act

There are numerous instances in American history where a president, faced with a hostile Supreme Court and an inconvenient ruling said "Fuck you.  I'm the po-lice.  Enforce that."  Not only did the country survive, in some instances it was made a better place by it.

On a more practical note, it would be completely reasonable to say "Ok, the Voting Rights Act as a whole is a matter of national security, interstate commerce and federal election law.  Congress must treat this as an injunction to change the basis by which "a history of prejudicial voting laws" is defined, but until it does, I am obliged by national security interests to maintain the existing map."

Everyone gets what they claim to want.

Racist shits trying to undo fifty years on a technicality, through a stacked Supreme Court, still get to go fuck themselves.

A Small Comment on Bay Area Fashion

The problem with having two teams in the East Bay that wear 'gold' is that it translates itself into casual and even formal fashion, and, sadly, yellow is just a hideous color for clothing.

The Saddest Part

So I was having a conversation with my mother and siblings the other day.  My sister has just gotten comfortable in the first relationship she's ever been in that seems at least as likely as not to end in marriage, and my mother asked her, as people in relationships are prone to doing of other people who are not actually dating anymore, about what dating was like in the Bay Area.

I wasn't really listening to what she said about what women think of men in general, which, come to think of it, is really the more important testimonial, given that she's a woman, but she said something about men thinking of women as generally too shy, to which I interjected that I probably don't represent what most men think of women around here, but that if shy is the word that would occur to the average guy, I think it would be somewhat inaccurate and I reminded them both of what Ana told us about meeting her new boyfriend.

I had been there for the occasion, and it could not have been more obvious when Jerreau (sp?), a friend of our cousin Sarah who met us for burritos one day, asked her if she wanted to go for a bike ride some time, that he was asking her out romantically.  For whatever reason, however, Ana was slow on the uptake.  A week later she asked my dad if the meeting had likely been a date, and, of course, with no more information than you the reader have, he assured her that it had been.

A month later, when she was clearly in the relationship, she said, in retelling the story over dinner for those who hadn't seen her in a while, that, because she hadn't been sure it was a date or not, she'd probably been far nicer to him that she would have been if she'd known.

Now, she said this in all seriousness, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

On another block or a different walk from the dating conversation with Mom and Ana, we were back on the subject, this time with my brother in my sister's place and Ana walking ahead with my Dad.

I think I reopened the issue with a comment I've had on tap for a while now and felt, even at the time I spoke it, like it might have been only half relevant, that "If women understood, on a deep and collective level, that men are exactly what they are expected to be in order to get laid, and if rarely more, certainly never less, a lot of women I know would be treated better by their men, or rather, they'd be treated better by better men."

My mother latched on to the comment, saying that if all that men are interested in at first encounter with a woman is sex, a woman is justified in being a little defensive.

And here is the saddest thing.

The saddest thing about our now-mainstream 'feminist' upbringing is that treating men as if they were soulless, cynical, insatiable, unrepentant 'playas,' on permanent fuck patrol doesn't simply give them an open invitation to be, it demands that they conform to this absolutely pathetic, bullshit notion (and it gives them as false and even more destructive an image of the male as the more famous media image of the female).

Two facts to keep in mind.  A.) The male reproductive system reverts, after a certain period of inactivity, usually about the six month range, to a state of hyper-sensitivity that some refer to as "born-again-virginity" due to the increased likelihood of premature ejaculation in these circumstances.  This means that, if a man does not get laid regularly, at least twice a year, his chances of satisfying a partner and therefore of retaining a partner, and therefore of getting laid in the first place in the second six months after a failed first six, are drastically reduced.  Human males are not just rewarded by evolution if they get laid, they're punished by evolution if they do not have physical sex regularly, masturbation only extends the six-month period marginally.

B.) The human brain, even the MALE one, is perfectly capable of holding two thoughts in it at once.

(and a third, a BTW one, that easily more than three quarters of guys want nothing more in life than a rewarding, monogamous relationship, children and a white picket fence.  YES.  If this is really news to you, I'm very, very sorry)

Hell, its capable of holding three thoughts, four motivations and seven different, conflicting emotions at once, I think it's capable of saying to itself, without breaking stride, "Wow, I wanna fuck that woman and see if she's intelligent enough to carry my babies."

This phrase "all that guys are interested in is sex" was composed by a pathetic loser, not a feminist.  A proper, anthropologically and sociologically supported statement, as true feminism has always been rooted in science, not the emotionality (which solid science shows women are more likely to base decisions on than men, go fuck yourselves) of a lonely, resentful spinster, would be "guys are always interested in sex."

This is why my father and I both knew, without second thought, that "a bike ride in the Sunset district" was of course, always a date, no matter how delicately or skillfully her boyfriend danced around the idea to keep her disarmed.  But its also why I like Jerreau, or rather, why I don't dislike him enough to have given him a chance to make me like him, which he did.  Because I accept that he wants to fuck my sister, but he was also willing to do that bullshit dance just to go out with her, who is so hook, line and sinker a third-wave feminist, no matter how hard I've tried to push her past third-wave mentalities.  Now whether that's a testament to how amazing he thought my sister was, or if it's just the basic learned behavior of a long-term, single-male resident of the region I don't really care, you adapt to your surroundings, even if your surrounding are stupid.  The point is that he was willing to do it, completely, no reservations, for her, and that as far as I can tell he dances with one woman if he's made a promise.

The ladies of the San Francisco Bay Area will have to forgive me if I don't feel much like learning this dance. I've certainly not met one yet who was worth my becoming a lying asshole just to prove that I'm not a lying asshole.

I also have this thing for Cheap Trick.

I mean to say I want women who are willing to own it that they want me, I'm REALLY fucking turned off by third-class treatment just because I'm not willing to LIE that I'm not trying to fuck you.  Even bigger a turn-off?  The idea that any relationship I would have with you WOULD HAVE STARTED WITH A FUCKING LIE!!!  Are you fucking kidding me?  HOW is this desirable!?!  "Prove to me that you're honestly interested in a relationship with me by lying to me convincingly about what you are and are not interested in."  No. I'm sorry.  I know I've already left a few women up here butt-hurt because I wouldn't just PLAY them, but game is for fucking CHILDREN, and I'm genuinely not fucking interested, I will not fucking hesitate to pass up a sure thing to fuck you if it means I'd have to play you, even slightly, to do it.  I JUST DON'T WANT A LIAR FOR A LOVER, sorry.

A Recent Personal Realization

I probably shouldn't post this, as it will be a bit revelatory and I'm still looking for a job.

But I'm not exactly the type to let that stop me from exploring myself, now am I?  I suppose I'll just have to be sure to keep posting regularly for a while, and hope to bury this little 'vulnerability' episode deep enough in the archived posts that no prospective employer takes the time to get to it.

Of course, I'll need to change the title...

Eh.

So I've realized recently that I've always been a lot like that kid in The Emperor's New Clothes, or at least I've always relished that role whenever it came my way.

That's not much of a realization, in and of itself, obviously--"hey, I look like my mom!"--no, the thing I thought was worth writing about on it is the further realization that, while that kid is brilliant, and honest, and sees keenly, and just has that thing, that indescribable way of doing things that doesn't even reflect in an IQ test, and all of that, that kid is also just a little fucking annoying.

Not least to the Emperor, who, let's not forget, is something of a non-conformist, (fashion-, at least) forward-thinking radical himself.

And here's the thing, often as not, its that kid that gets run out of town, not the emperor, or at the very least, the kid has to go too, because he reminds the people of their embarrassment, whether he talks about it or not.

Socrates (another reflection-of-self I've seen lately) dies, in the end, let's not forget. Sure, he's remembered forever, and his lesson about pure democracy led to the (slightly) more robust Latin republic, etc., etc., etc. But Socrates is fucking DEAD, man, he's seeing none of it.

So the little boy has to grow up, he's got to learn to pick his poisons (had to), learn to ask questions instead of just knowing the answer, but most of all, I think, he's got to be more vulnerable, oddly. This is because when your biggest risk is the crowd, its best to give its members a little blood in advance, one at a time, to satisfy them you can be wrong about something smaller than the epic things your dreamy, sea-monster brain (rising out of nowhere, lashing out inexplicably here or there, overpowering all local forces before dissipating into an harmless-looking, invertebrate blob, floating on the horizon) is usually concerned with.

In other words, when you seem untouchable, people inevitably start to think about how to take you down.

Wait.  I'm not going to delete the previous five lines, because there's something in there, too, but I've had another thought.

That kid, in some ways, is the real tyrant.  The people, don't forget, are happy.  They like their emperor, even if they can see his balls flopping about under those invisible clothes he wears.  Hell, they may even have started having mainstream fashion conversations about scrotal piercings and other cosmetic opportunities now available under the new clothes.

Yes, he represents a tyranny of the mind, of the real, that the people don't want to hear.  That they might need to hear it, before they all spend their money on fabric no one will buy in any other town, doesn't change the fact that they are unwilling thinkers.

So maybe blood sacrifice isn't the answer, huh?  How does the metaphor translate if the solution is bloodsport?

How do you make it fun to face the illusions you've built up in your mind because they seemed easier than dealing with the truth (which I suppose, metaphorically, must have been a shortage of fabric)?

I suppose this is easy, right?  Methods that have been tested time and again, to the point that even ethical distinctions are well understood.

Start by isolating one of the crowd.  Quickly and effectively otherize them.  Mock them about what the entire crowd is doing stupidly.  Never acknowledge that the rest of the crowd is doing the same thing.

"Hey, look everybody!  The village idiot thinks the Emperor's really wearing invisible clothes!  He doesn't understand that he's just naked, pretending to wear clothes!  What an idiot, right?!?"

For ethical application, attempt to choose someone with the moral strength to laugh at themselves, otherize them with something endearing rather than embarrassing, and perhaps include self in the otherization, to the continuing exclusion of the crowd.  If ethical application seems impossible, at least try to choose someone who deserves it.

"Oh my god, everybody, I need your help!  You know senile old granny, she's 'round the bend again, thinks that the Emperor's really wearing invisible clothes!  Help me explain to her.  Oh granny, you're so silly, I almost thought you were right for a second, I could have sworn I saw the light shimmer off it as he danced, but then I realized they all been having a joke on us, he's just naked and they're pretending he's wearing beautiful clothes.  Granny, granny, granny, they almost had us, didn't they?"

An Open Letter to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey:

Mr. Erdoğan:

I wish to express my admiration for you, above all, as a champion of justice and of freedom of world historical significance. As an admirer, I would like to lend you my words for a public statement you have been literally dying (whether you're willing to admit it) to find the words and the personal courage to publish. I am sure a good Turkish translator will have no trouble preserving the spirit of what I say, its all pretty universal:



I, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a sailor's son, a child of Turkey and of Asia, born in the most beautiful city in Europe, etc. etc., you can tell it better than I, have been blessed by God to be esteemed a leader by my own people. The great heroes of freedom, of whom I am truly blessed of God to have yet a hope of joining, if we, as a Turkish nation, can find a place for compassion in our hearts during this, the first civil crisis of a new Turkey, have set a precedent of humility that their aspirant successors abrogate at their immortal peril.

The eyes of God and of men cannot look down on me if I decide to seek the Presidency of my nation, for I have played the game skillfully, and by the rules. If my partisans are, in all humility, more securely in power, within the law, than the law is really meant to give to any single organization, and if I, therefore, have more power than the leader of a free country is meant to possess within his own borders, then it falls to me, in the sight of God, as a leader of free men, to assure my countrymen that I remember my people, that I will not abridge their freedom, and that I will not resist legitimate attempts to unseat my government at the ballot box.

For my people's future, for the future of the political movement I do not wish to die with me, and for my own immortal reputation, I will not serve concurrently as the leader of my political party and the president of my nation. To some this will seem an insufficient, insignificant gesture, political theater, meant to appease just enough people to survive this crisis, and to them I say, ORGANIZE!!! Use these moments in the streets together, misbehaving in the name of justice, taunting your countrymen in uniform with hurled insults and hurled stones, use this time to glorify your people, in the name of justice, and of righteousness, and in the glory of God.

Challenge me. Challenge my AK Party to be better, to serve you better, to lead you better. Because you are right: I have, in some sense, too much power, even if I still feel infuriatingly powerless in times like these, and you, the younger generation, the rising heart of a growing Turkish Nation do not see yourselves in the laws of my party. But this is not because I am right, or wrong, or a dictator or a democrat. It is because I am in power in a still-young democracy and because you, Turkey, you must find yourself in this crisis, for my party is what you, its members, make of it, what you challenge it to be.

This is not about a park, although I have ordered a review of the development plan to evaluate if there are ways that the community which felt slighted in the planning process can be accommodated. This development, however, must go forward, ultimately. Turkey must go forward, and although this neighborhood and many beautiful Turkish places across the nation will be forever changed in this process, together, as a nation, we will build a future that has as much to give us pride in being Turkish as the past we have, with reverence, and respect, build anew.



At least, that's what I would say, and do, if I were in your position. You are not the foolish Mr. Putin, to watch the reputation and the nation you have carefully nurtured crumble around you because you do not feel personally ready to stop working. At a certain point, the same work that was righteous yesterday becomes tyranny tomorrow, and you, sir, do not get to choose when that is.

Respectfully,

George Levin