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Rebirth Brass Band - When the Saints Go Marching In
I’m starting to get used to very nearly not winning and then winning. Not really: every time I’m certain we’ll lose. Previously.
mills
My name is Mills Baker; I write about love, culture, art, religion, mental illness, philosophy, memory, politics and the rather random.
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My parents just returned from Spain, and my father wrote to me about the magic square on Josep Subirachs’ Passion Facade of the Sagrada Familia, the amazing Cathedral by Antonio Gaudí still under construction in Barcelona. I was there more than ten years ago, but I don’t recall noticing the square.
Magic squares are mathematical puzzles; all rows and all columns add up to the same sum, in this case 33, the age of Jesus at his death. This is not a true magic square, as some numbers are duplicated.
Readers of Steve Martin’s wonderful novel The Pleasure of My Company might recall that magic squares have an interesting history, and were evidently enjoyed by Albrecht Dürer, among others. The presence of one on the Passion Facade is perhaps interesting, or is perhaps reflective of the sort of aesthetic and philosophical ideas that made Subirachs’ additions so controversial; my father, for example, detests them. I don’t like that he ignored Gaudí’s vision and I suspect his work will not endure: its style seems to me preoccupied with its own revolt against tradition; it is indifferent to its audience.
Here is the Nativity Facade (photo by Brian Colson; more photos of this facade are here):
Although radical, its quality is primarily organic; it seems to me as though it is carved on the inside of a cave. What is remarkable is that it remains extravagantly ornate, but is not ostentatious in its ornateness; that is an achievement. Here is the Passion Facade, made many years later by Subirachs, shot by the same photographer (more here):
Details are particularly revealing of the differences, the former as lush as stone can be, alive, corporeal, the latter austere, severe, modernist, angular. See details here and here, for a good encapsulation of the differences.
Cathedrals once, and evidently still, take centuries to build, and styles changed as they were constructed, although with less speed than is presently the case. The incorporation of many styles and subsequent additions generally delights us now, and perhaps this will as well someday. But, to be very simple about it, I find Subirachs’ work ugly and dispiriting.
“First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach a large economic reward to it that usually has nothing to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a “B.A.”
Charles Murray in an arresting piece on America’s absurd, outmoded, socioeconomically cruel university system (thanks dad!). While at Bard I’d not have understood his points; my time at LSU illustrated his thesis: for many students, the B.A. is an artificial goal, often unattainable and usually unrelated to their subsequent careers; it is, in most cases, a token reward for waiting and surviving in the back of the classroom for a few years while sinking deep into debt. Perhaps its primary function is to communicate that one was able to afford not to work for some years: a class badge.
The amazing Sarah Belfort started another blog called Song and Stamp; it features songs and stamps, which themselves feature, in this case, space dogs.
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged — the same house, the same people — and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.”
Vladimir Nabokov, a favorite of Abby’s, quoted by the always-wonderful Simen; he asks: “Do we view “the prenatal abyss” with such calm simply because it’s past, or is it more existentially troubling to have existed and then disappear than it is to have never existed in the first place? In other words, is our fear of our own nonexistence, or of death?”
I am not troubled by prenatal non-existence for the same reason that pain experienced in the past is less troubling than pain yet to be experienced: my mind moves forward, so to speak, through time. Although perhaps only entropy necessitates the progression of time in a single direction from the perspective of physics, for the conscious creature time’s unidirectionality is not abstract. Whatever happened, I -the observing and reflecting “I”- remain and persist; but when I die in the future, I will not.
One might ask: would it be frightening to die if we knew we would somehow return one hundred years later -just a century spent “blacked out”? No: it is the permanent cessation of all existing that terrifies, with its black, imperceiving, unreflecting nullity. For that reason, prenatal non-existence isn’t upsetting; it has, so to speak, a happy ending: our beginning. Actual death, we fear, will not.
Searchlights and anti-aircraft fire over Los Angeles.
Late on February 24 and in the early hours of February 25, 1942, anti-aircraft guns in Los Angeles fired 1,400 shells at unidentified objects spotted in a sky illuminated by searchlights. Subsequently described as a false-alarm due to “war nerves,” the incident followed the shelling on February 23 of an oil-field near Santa Barbara by a Japanese submarine.
Three civilians were killed by the anti-aircraft fire in the so-called Battle of Los Angeles. A contemporary radio broadcast can be heard here. I learned all this researching the movie they’re shooting a block from my house which, it appears, will be quite bad.
Epitaph of Joy Davidman, by C.S. Lewis
Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.
This is the epitaph C.S. Lewis dedicated to his wife. This quality of the “single mind,” that it contains, reflects, and affects “the whole world”: it is in this sense that every death is the obliteration of an infinity, the end of a reality. In this light, calculations about life and death are absurd. What can justify the destruction of the stars, water, air, field, forest, and everything else one has within oneself?
That is not to say there are no other ways of thinking.
“Neither a pathology nor an index of moral default, stupidity is nonetheless linked to the most dangerous failures of human endeavor.”
Avital Ronell. Is she right? Remember: both knowledgeability and intelligence have willed and unwilled components (including: genetics, class, development, luck). If intelligence has a moral quality because of its impact on the participatory polity, then stupidity is a moral lapse due to its effects.
This means that whether stupidity is “willed” or not, whether it is the result of developmental aberrations or a lack of access to education or a lazy preference for partying or a poverty of inspiration or a resentful incuriosity, its negative impact on the public good makes it immoral. Whom shall we blame, morally, for stupidity?
Ronell includes in that paragraph, from her book Stupidity, a mention of Hannah Arendt’s frustrated effort to determine how stupid Adolf Eichmann was and what the effect of that stupidity really was on his deeds. The effort to assess how error affects “the most dangerous failures of human endeavor” reminds me of my favorite Errol Morris quote: “Error is the central feature of human existence.”
Errol Morris asserts, and I believe, that intelligence offers only very flimsy protection from error; I see much historical and contemporary evidence that it is nearly as likely -in some of its contortions, likelier- than stupidity to produce disaster.
Ills Manor, Est. 2008 (larger)
I got many nice presents for surviving -in the face of no obstacles whatever- another year, from the gifts from the Locomotive Sisters to the kind note from Andy (happy birthday!) to Abby’s presence here in Louisiana to well-wishes from many to gifts from family, friends, and coworkers. It was all much more than I deserve, not solely because I’m a reprobate but also because -and I here channel my inner-athlete in the post-game homily of empty phrases- I just came out and tried to execute on metabolizing and not getting killed.
So I don’t want to slight anyone when I say that as far as presents go, Lacey’s absolutely incredible gift is hard to beat: a sturdy and beautifully-made wooden sign for application to the front of the ostentatious compound I share with Will and which is known far and wide as Ills Manor.
None fighting through the surrounding swamps to attend one of our lavish cocktail parties will ever again wonder, Which mansion do those guys live in? It’s the one that says Ills Manor, chum. Now get inside and grab yourself a Clearly Canadian.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lacey! What an awesome present!
“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Is a rule’s value to be found in its praxis? And since no rule can keep hardship, tragedy, or death away, is any rule “of use”? And what sort of rule might Chigurh mean? Can some rules accomplish a delivery, by transcendence rather than avoidance, from the sorrow and violence of ordinary life? Are those rules “of use”? What is the difference between transcendence and flight?
Does everyone’s life unfold according to implicit rules? Does it matter whether one understands the rules -or single unifying rule- according to which one lives?
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Sidney Bechet - When the Saints Go Marching In
Last week I made explicit my wish that Saints games not be so heart-stopping as the victory over Miami was; once again, the universe has demonstrated that at best it is indifferent to my desires. Last night, Abs even got into the game, experiencing roughly the same palpitations during the final quarter that I did.
As happy as I am for the Saints to be 7-0, I’m happier to share some Bechet.
Fig. 1. Astute viewers will note that ordinarily, Hobbes carried Calvin.
One thing I particularly like about Abby is her incredible emotional resiliency. On Saturday night in New Orleans, on an evening in which I was peripherally involved in a startling assault and we were digested and spewed out by the monstrous crowd on Frenchman street in the Faubourg Marigny, a very drunk girl fell through a sign and they both crashed onto Abby’s little foot, breaking it.
Despite being crippled by pain -see here for the amazing bruise- she was in good spirits as the evening wore on, maintaining that her foot would be fine. The next day, at the most amazing clinic in the world, we learned that it will not. Abby is uninsured, has no car, and works as a waitress while attending school in San Francisco, so the coming months will be trying.
On the other hand, it means she is staying with me for a few more nights, boot and all. Here are our Halloween photos. Note in particular that my best friend went as Jack White, who tried to steal my girlfriend: tangled webs and so on.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Lachrymarum - Stan Douglas
This, from the re-imagining by Stan Douglas (with John Medeski and Scott Harding) of the soundtrack for the Italian horror film Suspiria, is scientifically-proven to be the scariest song ever.
Feel free to use it to keep trick-or-treaters away.
Flaubert and de Maupassant
From Irredenta I found this article by Julian Barnes, whom I like very much, on some new translations of Guy de Maupassant and much more; at the outset, he includes an exchange between de Maupassant and literary mentor Gustav Flaubert:
At the age of 27, de Maupassant writes:
‘Fucking women is as monotonous as listening to male wit. I find that the news in the papers is always the same, that the vices are trivial, and that there aren’t enough different ways to compose a sentence.’”
Flaubert replies:
You complain about fucking being ‘monotonous’. There’s a simple remedy: cut it out for a bit. ‘The news in the papers is always the same’? That’s the complaint of a realist – and besides, what do you know about it? You should look at things more carefully … ‘The vices are trivial’? – but everything is trivial. ‘There aren’t enough different ways to compose a sentence’? – seek and ye shall find … You must – do you hear me, my young friend? – you must work harder than you do. I suspect you of being a bit of a loafer. Too many whores! Too much rowing! Too much exercise! A civilised person needs much less locomotion than the doctors claim. You were born to be a poet: be one. Everything else is pointless – starting with your pleasures and your health: get that much into your thick skull. Besides, your health will be all the better if you follow your calling … What you lack are ‘principles’. There’s no getting over it – that’s what you have to have; it’s just a matter of finding out which ones. For an artist there is only one: everything must be sacrificed to Art … To sum up, my dear Guy, you must beware of melancholy: it’s a vice.
The rest of the article is very interesting on questions of translation, literature, and love, and offers what might be a reason Flaubert would object to some blogging : “[He] thought that for a writer to give the public details of his private life was a bourgeois weakness which should be avoided.”
"What has she ever done with her life that's so great?"
That handsome devil and Louisiana gadabout Mills marks his 29th birthday today — stop by one of his online homes and pass on your best wishes.
When I first made the decision to use Tumblr as a blogging platform a year ago, I had some misgivings. Everything seemed so short and so ephemeral! Mills’s tumblelog was the only one that I knew of in those early days that seemed to think it was OK to write longer, more complicated posts. Moreoever, people seemed to enjoy reading them! “Huh,” I thought. “I guess this means I can write longer pieces if I want to. I guess I can even” — dare I even utter this aloud — “take it kind of seriously if the occasion warrants.”
Without his example, I might have given up on Tumblr and I’d be thanklessly toiling away on Wordpress! Maybe I’d even be dead. Who can say with any certainty? To paraphrase Lionel Hutz: “hero” is not a word I use very often, but Mills is the greatest hero in American history.
Apropos of the amazing Andy Sturdevant’s very kind comments, I would like to momentarily excuse myself from my typical regimen of insecurity and self-loathing and crow: if in some incidental way I contributed to Andy’s presence on Tumblr, I am damned proud and you should all thank me.
I don’t want to be maudlin, but I appreciate his remarks greatly, as well as thoughtful posts from my friends Elle and Lacey and Cricket and the messages from many of you who constitute such a happy part of my life. I perhaps give the impression of someone substantially more confident than I in fact am, and your generosity, engagement, and forbearance have meant the world to me.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, Abby is in town, and I am reminded of the concluding lines spoken by Mr. Green in Clue, which propriety prevents me from quoting.
