The Inklings Continued

Art

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:54:12 -0500

The countless attempts to expose you and I to the world, to tragedy, starting with a parade of black faces in Macbeth and then to a Touch of Evil, fallen upon deaf ears, transformed, and ultimately crushed, because we must hear, but instead we see, and when we see we see others, but when we hear we might take to heart and transform ourselves.

So many offerings tried on the screen, so many repetitions of theatrical guise, burnings and mortification. And yet, the Joker lives and so do we, holding up our two boats with moral indignation while a thousand other little ships collide and sink in deepest darkest Africa. We have refused to go there, although we are already there. We have refused to go to the deepest darkest heart, although, like our bold hero, we also strive heavenward in Faustian frenzy, struggling in our laboratories to construct wings both strong and light enough to fly away from the darkness we brought back and now feasts upon our children.

That our hearts also would become like wax and melt in the crucible, that our flesh might be transformed, but we cast light upon screens and struggle with color. There was a dance, it was all dance, it was all beautiful, so many smiles, and once and awhile a phallus. So we arose and sent our daughter into the woods where Wotan was waiting. And then because we did not understand what happened, we constructed a shrine. And this shrine was a ward against evil, but the evil was not what we understood. Was it Wotan or the laughing virgin? We did not understand. And so we burn.

And as we burn we live in a world of black and white. We know no color. This is reassuring until we reach the dead of winter, the cold shadow of waiting nuclear holocausts, and we shiver. We need heat. Our carven images do not suffice. And so we fall into the world of menstrual blood, not understanding this delicate process of death and life, of falling and rising, that preceded and will always be with us. We have only red; we no longer understand the meaning of sacrifice.

It might have been better to start with a verdant green, to start in the shade before attempting such a quest — which must always meet winter, but this does not guarantee that we would end up anywhere, except attempting to escape our insanity with other thespians or hoping that a new nihillism can bring liberation through the burning of past temples or collection of scalps.

It might be, it was, in some cases a loud death, a screaming death, although ignored by the mass of men because they no longer cared for or understood the struggle, or it might simply be a thud in the night or the time when are handcuffed and taken away to prevaricate our way to the truth of our existence by the ward’s psychologist.

The poem continues to hide behind myrid masks of deliberate construction.

Joel Dietz, on his Forum, Dunedain.net

Let Them Eat Cake

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:28:28 -0500

Let Them Eat Cake:

While the world economy descends in a death spiral, with ghost fleets of shipping marooned off Singapore and millions going out of work every day, our therapeutic “Let Them Eat Cake” elite class is holding Art exhibits at expensive venues in Venice.

Red vs. Blue

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:08:26 -0400

Red vs. Blue:

I am surprised that people are finally figuring out that sociology and psychology, as well as religion, determines worldview, not “prejudice” and “hatred”. Does this mean there’s not a nickel-worth difference?

Was Rome a Solar Power?

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:06:00 -0400

Was Rome a Solar Power? :

Heilbrun also wrote a book on Cathedrals and the sun. Was religion originally a manifestation of male energy? Thirteenth Warrior…

Sacred Music

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:20:11 -0400

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/10/sacred-music-sacred-time

Augustine here proposes not merely a psychology of music but also an ontology: He seems to think that the “numbers of judgment” with which we evaluate rhythm exist eternally and were given to us by God. A thousand years later, the Renaissance philosopher most influenced by Augustine’s treatise, Nicholas of Cusa, put the matter somewhat differently: “Creative art, which the happy soul will attain, is not of its essence that art which is God, but rather participation and sharing in it.” The great composers never imagined that they were participating in creation, only imitating it. Sacred music is not revelation, just the next best thing.

Expectation and memory, Augustine adds, determine our perception of distant past and future: “It is not then future time that is long, for as yet it is not: But a long future, is ‘a long expectation of the future,’ nor is it time past, which now is not, that is long; but a long past is ‘a long memory of the past.’” This is the insight that allows Augustine to link perception of time to the remembrance of revelation and the expectation of redemption.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley

After attending a performance in Bristol Cathedral in 1758, Wesley said: “I went to the cathedral to hear Mr Handel’s Messiah. I doubt if that congregation was ever so serious at a sermon as they were during this performance. In many places, especially several of the choruses, it exceeded my expectation.”

Leonard Pitts, Statistics, and Race

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:53:00 -0400

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003731134_pitts03.html

“For instance, there’s “Off Balance: Youth, Race and Crime in the News,” a 2001 report that concluded: Blacks and Latinos are underrepresented in news media as victims of crime and significantly overrepresented as perpetrators, based on crime statistics; newspaper articles about white homicide victims are longer and more frequent than those about black ones; and interracial violent crime is more likely to be reported even though it is just about the rarest kind of violent crime.”

Leonard Pitts is quoting from their executive summary: http://www.buildingblocksforyouth.org/media/exec.html

Unfortunately, the report tells almost next to nothing about interracial crime per se, which as he so strangely fails to perceive, is the only matter of interest in a discussion on a topic like the Knoxville murders. In other words, the issue isn’t whether the couple were more likely (right up to the point it happened) to have been “victimized violently by a member of their own race”, but whether the odds were proportional (which the study claims actually is proportional, by a three to one margin), what type of brutality was involved, and whether such violence ever occurs going the other way. This is notably absent. The study merely claims minorities are more likely to have a long story on them, and more likely to receive a general statistical “over-reporting”, both in length and incidence relative to their percentage of the whole. What it does not do is separate armed robbery from homicide, for example, or stabbing from rape. Furthermore, a minority could receive attention more often for the same type of crimes for legitimate reasons, such as the crime involving a stranger of a different race. Or, perhaps, the manner of violence involved or the level of intensity with which it is deployed might be a neutral factor that leads to “bias”. Beating someone with a baseball bat and holding up a register aren’t at the same interest level. Most crucially, mathematically speaking, a minority could more often receive attention in violent crime, relative to their overall slice of the pie, while still committing a disproportionally greater amount of interracial crime. In otherwords, the report doesn’t address the issue involved at all. Whether Pitts is right, overall, is irrelevant, because his sources he uses to make a vague claim of violent crime equality is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Whites could receive a statistically fair proportion of violent crime from blacks (from a general view from their side), while blacks could still eat up the vast majority of interracial crime. It’s a subject no one wants to discuss.

Even the report fails to explain: “The more unusual the crime or violence, the more likely it is to be covered. Factors that increase the likelihood of a homicide being reported in the news are multiple victims, multiple offenders, an unusual method, a White victim, a child, elderly, or female victim, or occurrence in an affluent neighborhood.”

This gives the impression that a black victim is invisible. But it fails to ask the unspeakable question- are there any examples of this happening the other way? Are there victims of kidnapping/rape who are black, with white perpetrators? This is the interesting subset. If not, then all kinds of conclusions could be drawn or explanations posited.

Reformed Theosis

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:57:56 -0400

Reformed Theosis

Red Toryism in Scotland

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:45:35 -0400

“The legality of any UK component country attaining de facto independence (in the same manner as the origins of the Irish Republic) or declaring unilateral independence outside the framework of UK constitutional convention is uncertain. Prevailing legal opinion following the precedent set by the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision on what steps Quebec would need to take to secede is that Scotland would be unable to unilaterally declare independence under international law if the UK government permitted a referendum on an unambiguous question on secession.^[55]^[56] It is uncertain how the unilateral 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence and subsequent recognition by the UK and some EU member states has affected this legal position,^[57]^[58] Successive British Prime Ministers, however, have acknowledged the right of the Scottish people to determine their own future.^{[59]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence}

"It is this accursed practice of for ever considering only what seems expedient of the occasion,..."

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:50:25 -0400

“It is this accursed practice of for ever considering only what seems expedient of the occasion, disjointed from all principle or enlarged systems of action, of never listening to the true and unerring impulses of our better nature, which has led the colder-hearted men to the study of political economy, which has turned our Parliament into a real committee of public safety. In it is all power vested; and in a few years we shall either be governed by an aristocracy, or what is still more likely, by a contemptible democratical oligarchy of glib economists, compared to which the worst form of aristocracy would be a blessing.”

- Coleridge, Table Talk (via jdietz)

Merlin, by Muir

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:56:27 -0400

O Merlin in your crystal cave
Deep in the diamond of the day,
Will there ever be a singer
Whose music will smooth away
The furrow drawn by Adam’s finger
Across the memory and the wave?
Or a runner who’ll outrun
Man’s long shadow driving on,
Break through the gate of memory
And hang the apple on the tree?
Will your magic ever show
The sleeping bride shut in her bower,
The day wreathed in its mound of snow
and Time locked in his tower?

Resurrection Stone

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:05:00 -0400

The Eemis Stane

by Hugh MacDiarmid

“I’ the how-dumb-deid o’ the cauld hairst nicht The warl’ like an eemis stane Wags i’ the lift; An’ my eerie memories fa’ Like a yowdendrift. / Like a yowdendrift so’s I couldna read The words cut oot i’ the stane Had the fug o’ fame An’ history’s hazelraw No’ yirdit thaim.”

The world itself is Rowling’s Resurrection Stone. The snow (post-Fall) obscures our vision, and Time’s lichen hides the inscription upon the promise. Nevertheless, the seer (MacDiarmid) does not deny but that something…is there.

We fear the unknown, and yet construe it. We experience the sting of Death, and we extrapolate that Death itself is far, far worse. We ourselves supply the fear and the power that grips us. I fear Death. I cannot read the riddle. The customary “dark way” was the way of faith, to embrace the riddle-maker, regardless. The other way is to see, to stare, to love, and to finally hope, until (once more) the old faith lost returns.

Voldemort denies Death. Most people merely ignore it. This is worse, in its own way. The evil of Voldemort (life below the black line, but still religious) is both better and worse than sinking below the black line on the other, secular side. Both are materialisms, which harden all things, under the all-seeing glance of the eyes (the light-world hardened, arrogantly), into something assured and known.

"When wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the field, you can hear the beards..."

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:09:53 -0400

“When wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the field, you can hear the beards of the wheat rubbing together. They sound like the pine needles in a forest. It is a sweet, whispering music that once you hear, you never forget.”

- Norman Borlaug (via jdietz)

Rowling-Renaissance?

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:15:02 -0400

Rowling-Renaissance?:

The Rowling-Renaissance link is critical. The Reformation viewed the Middle Ages as corrupt/hierarchical, and the Enlightenment viewed it as superstitious and chaotic. The Renaissance merely viewed it as incomplete. As such, the Renaissance may share a good deal more with “medievalism” than either of the other two. I may take this blog in the direction of exploring the possibilities of using Rowling’s work to revitalize the Renaissance ideal, and attempt to relate this to the Inklings.

Voldemort

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:56:00 -0400

Rowling does not suggest that blood is not important. It is, particularly if it is (say) your mother. What is more important (however) is blood chosen to be spilt - sacrifice. Next to this, what one inherits is merely an idol. However, it is only if it is naked blood. Naked spirit opposed to naked blood give a legalism of the Spirit that is more intolerable than recidivistic atavism. Yes, a choice is more important than “nature” (what you “are”). However, I am not sure where this leaves the concept of “species”. I suppose a lot of the power of these images (not the other ones, which I find more compelling) derives from the modern milieu, which I appreciate, but find less interesting than the concept of “an older magic”. The ideal is to have blood AND water, lineage and Spirit. Righteousness and Mercy. Earth and Heaven. Voldemort, for all his talk of purity, really hates it. He does not proportion either ends to means, or means to ends. They are all means or ends, as he chooses. Purity is what HE says it is. As Hitler said, it is I who decides who is a Jew, and who is not.

Moderne Art

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:38:00 -0400

Moderne Art:

Newman once famously quipped that artists had as much use for traditional aesthetics as birds did for ornithology. Of course, this was infamously and shamelessly recycled much later by the combative and acrid physicist Richard Feynman, who said the same thing about philosophy of science. I feel bound to point out, to myself and anyone who reads this, that Tom Wolfe was absolutely correct: Modern Art had made itself a slave to the false, but clear idea (Descartes’ fixation), but it had caused itself to disapparate up its own vortex into nothingness. Body disappeared; all that mattered was the idea/theory: art is geometric, art is flat, art is abstract, art without walls, art without picture frames, and finally, art without art, written on postcards, ideas or photographs. This revolt against the body is not peculiar to the West, but its particular modulation and obsessive memes are. Soon, technology and its slave, society, will begin to manifest massive repressions against body (which is actually aimed at the soul, since the two are inseparable). From medical problems all the way to inhuman and infernal machinery, the war on body/soul has only just gotten started.

What would the Inklings say? It is against this that they struggled…

Photo

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:47:54 -0400

Rowling's Politics

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:06:00 -0400

“One of ”Goblet”’s biggest themes is bigotry. It’s always been in your books, with the Hitlerlike Lord Voldemort and his followers prejudiced against Muggles (nonmagical people). In book 4, Hermione tries to liberate the school’s worker elves, who’ve been indentured servants so long they lack desire for anything else. Why did you want to explore these themes?

Because bigotry is probably the thing I detest most. All forms of intolerance, the whole idea of ”that which is different from me is necessary evil.” I really like to explore the idea that difference is equal and good. But there’s another idea that I like to explore, too. Oppressed groups are not, generally speaking, people who stand firmly together — no, sadly, they kind of subdivide among themselves and fight like hell. That’s human nature, so that’s what you see here. This world of wizards and witches, they’re already ostracized, and then within themselves, they’ve formed a loathsome pecking order.”

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0„85523,00.html

Comment: From my perspective (and I think from an older, Inklingnesque one), bigotry is difficult to define in the abstract, as well as necessary to have (in some degree) for survival. A simple awareness of (and possible mistrust based upon) differences is often the real basis for building creative relationships. Take Ron and Hermione, for instance - the “bigotry” between them is necessary to the tension, which is necessary for a good resolution. An abstract “equality” could hardly provide the same result. People relate the same way plot evolves out of drama - the tension is absolutely part of it.

The Road - Postmodern Times

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:41:00 -0400

The Road - Postmodern Times:

“All of life is warfare, in which we drink death like water, and life like wine…” Chesterton

“He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke” (5). At the same time he seems fully aware that all the supporting structures of belief and moral action have been destroyed: “Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone”(11). The father’s sole remaining referent of sacred idiom is his son. In sustaining his son’s breath, he sustains not only his own capacity for life but for some belief in life’s continuance, in the value of life. This is really an analogue of man’s place in the world, raising the question if structures may be built in air, of dream and story, of mere breath “trembling and brief,” a question intensified by the apparent end of time that appears so near.”

Rowling and McCarthy share the “postmodern turn”. The BIG question is whether any kind of meaning, societally, can subsist in an atomized vaccum where “systems” moral (ethos, ethnos, religio) are prejudged as too dangerous too encourage or allow.

Peter Saint-Andre | American Winter

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:12:03 -0400

Peter Saint-Andre | American Winter:

(via jdietz)

Harry Again...

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:38:54 -0400

I am halfway through the Harry Potter series. The one thing becoming clear to me is that, above all else, this particular fantasy series is deceptively well-written. The crucial component is actually the ability of the author to build, develop, and articulate (like a conductor) the implications of a fairly basic magical world. Rowling is a master composer/conductor (arguably, one of her “faults” is that she is so derivative of the Inklings. And so is improvising rather than composing). For Rowling, the “old magic” of Love has the ability to stop Voldemort. In fact, it will annihilate him. Voldemort has attempted to grasp and overcome Death, but only for himself, at the expense of all others. This, as well as his ignorance of the old magic, represent two aspects of his original sin, a sin which he is empowered to tempt others with, for we share it as well.