December 21, 2004
Gates of Paradise: Plate 7
At last, a figure that is not being crushed by his/her environment, representing the liberating energies of the so-called natural world. He also represents the liberating political energies of the French Revolution, which, at the time of this engraving (1793; before the Reign of Terror), Blake was still inclined to support.
Here we see Orc, Blake's hero of revolutionary fury, in all his glory. He is almost always associated with flames, often with scales, to show that he is a demon. He bursts onto the scene, armed with the just might needed to overthrow tyranny. Interestingly, he is depicted with two mounds on his head, as if to show the beginning of horns, which we would associate with Orc, and other characters associated with him--Lucifer, Satan, the Spectre.
This is Orc as Blake knew him when Blake considered himself a member of "the Devil's party," that is, someone who supported revolution and the subversion of social institutions such as church and state. Later, after Blake became disillusioned with the French Revolution (because, in its violence, it became as tyrannical as the regime it replaced), Orc was chained up and not heard from, and his associates, such as Satan, lost their patina of Miltonic heroism and became the traditional figures of unmitigated evil.
Then there's the proverb inscription, which says "Fire: that end in endless Strife." This, it seems to me, could mean two opposite things: endless strife, or the miraculous end of endless strife. In 1793, Blake would not have shied away from the idea of endless strife, in terms of endless vigilance towards tyranny. But for him the proper realm for strife was in the mind, in the imagination: this was his idea of "mental fight." His disillusionment with the Revolution came when the fight spilled over into the realm of history, and innocents began dying. At that point he became sickened with endless strife in the Europe of his day.
Blake must have felt the mordant irony in 1820, when he converted For Children: The Gates of Paradise into For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise. Here was Orc again, unchained, after being hidden away since the 1790s. But he would not remain unchained for long: the 1820 Blake would quickly lock him up in his box again. The moment of Orc had long since passed for Blake. It belonged in the previous century.
December 20, 2004
funny bizness in the funnies
Continuing on the theme of digital media inbedded in older media (television and, in this case, newspapers), there was something funny going on in the funnies on friday.
There was one comic (in The Washington Post) that seemed to speaking directly to the "Reading At Risk" conversation we had at the University of Maryland a few weeks back. Here's the comic, Pearls Before Swine, by Stephan Pastis.
Then there was Rhymes With Orange (which is one of my favorites, along with Pearls Before Swine, Boondocks, and Zippy the Pinhead), by Hilary Price, which also spoke to the digital condition and the supposed conveniences of the machine age:
And was Friday National Question Authority Day (yes, I think I remember President Bush signing something to that effect...IN MY DREAMS)? There were two comic strips on that theme. I would like to make the observation that the artists in question, Wiley, Jerry Scott, and Jim Borgman are also liberal POLITICAL CARTOONISTS. Rush Limbaugh is right: the left wing controls the media. This is proof. I think I'll call into his show tomorrow to tell him (in HIS dreams). Here are the comic strips.
have yourself a digital little christmas
I've gone partially digital in my holiday shopping. I gave each of my parents a gift certificate to Dedalus Books, a catalogue house for discount books and records. The gift was sent to them by email, from which, with one click, they can go to the site and order what they like, without me needing to interview them about which books and records they'd like, then buying them, then sending the items to them through the mail.
So why am I feeling like some kind of Scrooge for going digital on my parents for Christmas? I guess I ought to do some macrame or something and send that to them, just so they know their son hasn't totally become a robot.
tv review: two and a half observations
During my fifteen minutes of prime-time television watching last week, I saw part of an episode of Two and a Half Men. In the episode, Charlie (played by Charlie Sheen) Googles himself and finds an attack website put up by one of his ex-girlfriends, and contributed to by many others. Meanwhile, Alan (played by Jon Cryer) accidently sees his ex-wife on his son's webcam, leading to complications.
So if this is what I see when I turn the TV on for fifteen minutes, might I assume that digital culture is all over television (and all over our culture)? This might seem a stupid question to those (the great majority of Americans) who watch more than fifteen minutes of primetime TV a week. Or maybe they don't notice because it's so ubiquitous.
OK, I admit I saw another ten minutes the next evening (and I admit I've started watching TV while I'm eating my dinner). I saw a little bit of CSI:Miami. As anyone who watches that program (and its ilk) knows, there's plenty of digital tricks there too. But frankly, I find it obtrusive and gimicky--as annoying, for me, as the show's star, David Caruso.
How long before we're watching Charlie Sheen surf the web from our own computer monitor? Or have snuff shows like CSI:Miami popping up while we're browsing for other things?
December 9, 2004
Gates of Paradise: Plate 6
I've been staring at this image for a few weeks now. It doesn't terrify with the extreme claustrophobia of the previous plate ("Earth") but presents terrors (and a claustrophobia?) of its own, terrors that the world does not necessarily recognize as such but Blake does. The terror of what might be called "analysis paralysis"--over intellectualization; being trapped within the more airy element of disengaged and abstract thought. That is what the image suggests, the expression of the face, the placement of the hands: someone trying to keep his overheated brain from exploding.
Is it possible to be claustrophobic while sitting on a cloud (or mountaintop), stars twinkling above? Blake would seem to think so.
We should consider the motto, the words on the plate: "On Cloudy Doubts and Reasoning Fears." Doubts are certainly cloudy, but how can fears be reasoning? Doesn't reason dispel all fear? Contemporaries of Blake, such as William Godwin, may believe it but Blake cannot. The Enlightenment is a dead-end for Blake; it argues joy, love, vitality out of existence (perhaps because it argues sorrow, hate, and ennervation out of existence first, throwing off the contrary balance).
How is this an emblem for the spiritual life? Reason is not the end, but rather union with All That Is, which Blake sometimes calls the Human Form Divine. This is not far from any mystical teaching; for all of them, reason takes one so far and then one must make a leap into the unknown. The mountaintop worrier, beset by reasoning fears, needs to stand and leap towards the stars--to enter the empyrean of the Imagination.
I have a seminar paper to write on Blake, so I probably won't be blogging on the Gates of Paradise. But I may have some added insight when I come back to it.
existential game 20: fridge magnet poetry for celibates
Take the refrigerator magnet poetry you were given at the screening of a film about Alfred Kinsey, which is filled with sexually suggestive words that one might use to fulfill the slogan of the ad campaign "let's talk sex!" (of which the refrigerator magnet poetry is a part), and INSTEAD create a little poem that is the OPPOSITE of sexually suggestive. You might, in fact, create a little poem that praises detachment and celibacy, and put next to it a picture of St. Francis of Assisi, which just so happens to be, miraculously, already ON THE FRIDGE.
Here's a picture:
Review of U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
I've listened once to the new U2 album. I'm not feeling it. I'll try it again and actually listen to the lyrics. It might grow on me.
And there was no instruction, that I heard, on how to dismantle an atomic bomb. That's disappointing, because, if our president continues to breed terrorism with his clumsy foreign policy, this is something we might all need to know soon.
survivor: liner notes
Had an interesting old/new media moment over the weekend. I had brunch with some friends. The host, my friend Tony Baloney (not his real name), had the new U2 album, which he put on. We talked a little bit about our discomfort with the band shilling for Apple. But at least it wasn't Microsoft! Then Tony offered to burn the CD for me, off his ipod (which is perfectly legal--you're allowed something like five burnings). Heck yeah! (Review above). After burning the CD, he printed out the cover and liner notes, which stretched out over fourteen pages. That's when things got tricky.
He printed it out on a single side of the page and, after realizing his mistake, tried to rectify it by matching pages back-to-back. Except it wasn't matching. We tried all sorts of logical and logorithmic possibilities, but nothing worked. It was quite a game, and we were all playing--and all frustrated.
In the midst of the game, it kind of morphed into the parody of a reality program. This would be the little task for different teams--getting the liner notes in the right order, or else you wouldn't get to eat for a week or something (or even worse, not be able to listen to your ipod!). My friends in that house had no TV. The rest of us hardly watch it and (speaking for myself) never watch reality programming. Nonetheless, it's seeped into the culture enough for us to be able to make fun of it.
Eventually Jenny (her real name--because she deserves credit) figured it out, but only because she knew in her heart of hearts that the credits should go at the end and the fluffy pictures before that. It was a non-logical and non-logorithmic solution, but it worked.
So Jenny wins this round. And the rest of us are ipod-less for the rest of the week.
no longer artomatic
Artomatic, the local DC arts fest, ended on Sunday. All in all, I was pretty disappointed with the festival. I won't go so far as the art critic for the Washington Post, Blake Gopnik, who viciously panned the fest, but I will say there was a lot of bad art hanging on the walls. Some of the photography was OK, but the painting was atrocious. I was also disappointed in the new media selections and thought I'd be able to go to the website and pull off the URLs to post here--but alas there are no such links.
Besides that the website is pretty well-designed and interactive, with a discussion forum and photo blog.
On Saturday, the fest was open 24 hours. I went there around 11pm with some of my drumming friends. We heard there was going to be a dance party, but instead when we got there it was some weird, ambient avant-garde group playing some monotonous drone. At first I was interested because at least they were doing some multimedia, with film playing behind them, but as that was also monotonous, I lost interest.
Then the belly-dancers finally came on. They were fabulous--until the sound system broke down. We, the drummers, saved the day by running out to our cars and getting drums and racing back.
Soon thereafter we were invited to drum for the Guerilla Poets. That was a blast too. Then we heard the belly-dancers were still at it! We raced back downstairs and insinuated ourselves into that scene. The DJ was not cooperating, though. He kept playing his techno crap, changing it as soon as we got into a groove. The belly-dancers were probably as displeased with the DJ as we were. It's pretty hard to belly-dance to techno.
There's a photo on the photo blog of us drumming. Unfortunately, I've been cropped out on the left (where a lot of cropping is happening these days).
In the middle of our drumming, the fire alarm went off. It was activated, I'm guessing, by the smoke machine the techno DJ had going. Everyone had to leave the building. What did we do? We went outside into the courtyard and drummed! Everybody was grooving!
What's the moral of the story? Technology sure is great--except when it goes kablooey. If it does, it's good to have some old media (drummers) around.
And I have to say, if the art on the walls wasn't so hot, it was still a great place for the grand old art of people watching.