VOP: DONNY MAKES SOME SENSE OUT OF FINTAN-AS-ART, BUT ALSO ARGUES
AGAINST FINTAN'S IDEA OF WHAT ART IS -- possably leading into December's
topic.
"VOP" (Value of Post) is my addition/change to Fintan's suggested headding
system. Diana recomended that we ask ourselves "What is the value of this
post?" before we hit the send button, so I think, rather than just a
2-line summery of our post we should give a 2-line statment of what we
think is the value of it -- a "Hear's what I hope you get out of this."
************************************
Hello everyone.
Fintan, I'm sorry I spelled your name wrong. I'm a hororable
proof-reader.
Fintan's been getting a lot of flak lately. Some of it's fair. A
lot of it is not. Rick seemed to sum-up the argument when he said
something like: "Remember ZMM?...Egoist!" I thought that was kind of
funny beacuse it was Phaedrus who was accused of being an egoist -- and he
was/is. Spicifically, I believe you are thinking of the mountain-climbing
sceen where The Narrator talks about ego-climbing and chastizes Chris as
an egoist. But if you take a look, you can see what's going on there is:
What the Narrator hates about Chris is his simmilarity/connection to
Phaedrus. It was Phaedrus ego-climbing that got him "killed" and
endangered Chris. The Narrator is afraid of Phaedrus comming back and
endangering him -- and is also concerned about Chris following in his
(true) father's footsteps.
Phaedrus certainly is an arrogant SOB. Platt and Johnathan have
been discussing the morality of Phaedrus possition at the end of LILA. I
always interpreted it that "the doll" was correct. It was a happy ending.
Lila got what she wanted. Rigel got what he wanted. And it was wrong
(egotistical) of Phaedrus to think he knew what was best for her/them.
Pheadrus seems to intepret this as "Then why should I bother trying to
*tell them*?" So he sails away (ego deflated or brused?) and Pirsig
shuts-up and vanashis (more or less) from sight.
Personally, I don't mind ego. Actually I'm a little Nietzchien. To
me, whether X is ego-motavated or not doesn't matter -- just does it have
Quallity.
Do Fintan's posts have Quality/does Q have Fintan's posts?
Some of them do. About one in every 5 or 6 I find to be of high
quality. The rest don't hold-up.
I like the bit about the mirror. The idea of the mirror as a pain
of glass (transparent to the Absolute) w/ an added silver backing. Silver
is related by Fintan to the moon, and the moon, of course is the symbol of
the field of time -- The cycles of the moon, the shedding of its shaddow
the way the snake sheds it's skin, death and rebirth, death and rebirth...
So the anlogy is that that the person steping in front of the mirror is
like the "One" entering into the field of time and duality dividing into
I-this, right-left, good-bad, ect. But the pairs of oppsits are all just
self-reflections. There's a Zen poem: "Two mirrors face each other w/
nothing in between. There is no reflection."
Fintan's a power hitter w/ low accuracy. He misses 4 out of 5
balls, but when he does connect he sends the ball flying a pretty good
way. At times Quality has him. What kind of Quality? Social? No, I
don't think he'll make us either better citizens or even more popular.
Certainly not intellectual Quality. He's not proving anything to us even,
I think, when he wants too. (And, incidently, I don't think that, as
someone suggested, we are in the realm of IntPoVs just because we are
using language. Language can be used for lots of stuff other than IntPoVs.
I don't by Magnus' idea that the presence of language/syntax -- be it
words or musical harmony or street signs -- necessarily conotates the
presence of IntPoVs. I'm still defining 'IntPoVs' as a spicific type of
commumication -- A PROOF -- that is used to settle an argument; thus it
takes more than one person, and thus it arises out of the social areana. I
could sway you w/ threats, a bribe, social pressures, etc. but since the
turn of the century we have generally held that there is a most moral way
to prove something: the apeal to logic. Reason.)
Is it DQ that has Finton every so often? That's what RMP called
the "code of Art," and when Fintan's got it, I think, that's what he's
got. Finton's posts shouldn't be read for Int. Value. They're
not read, generally, the same way we'd read -- say -- Anthony's web essay
(very high Int. Value) If you're looking for some kind of system of
reasonable proof (Platt) of certain asertions then no wonder the
frustration. More or less by his own admission: it ain't there.
But now I'm going to talk out of the other side of my mouth.
Adressing Fintan:
Fintan, every so offten, amid your streems of wild free-form
raveings (w/ the occasional ranting) you seem to come up w/ something
prety darn good. The problem is: When this does happen for you it seems as
if by accident. This to me says one thing (and it's been saying it to me
over and over since you "re-joined" us a couple of months back): Here's a
guy w/ a lot of talent but no disciplin -- no training, no control and no
undrestanding. RAW talent. I'm both an art student and a (soon to be, at
least) art educator, so please trust that I know a little bit about this
sort of thing. Wht you want to do to improve as an artist is, figure out
where your successfull pieces(posts) are and *ANALYZE* why they are
working and why others arn't. Then you can bring up that bating average
and start knoking them out of the park nearly every time.
Somewhere along the way you seem to have gotten the idea that
being an artist means -- how did you put it? -- "casting off the chains of
intellectually structured consciousness." That an artist is someone who
just "followes his muse" acting on blind intuition alone. No. Sorry. It
ain't half that eassy. Study artist biographies! Even most of the one's
who give that impression are, in reality, very much in control of what
they are doing. Study art! You can see the "reasoning mind" working
behind it. Think Picasso could have done what he did w/o an almost
supernatural amount of control and a deep understanding of the principals
of design? No. Or look at Paul Klee's "infantile" drawings, and, when you
really study them, you can see pretty clearly that no small child could
really have done them. The composition is too good! From Pollock to Franz
Kline to Basquiatte... in reality all of them were analyzing their works
and making constant decisions about it. I've looked at A LOT of art in my
6 years at art school, and, trust me, I can hardly think of anybody that
didn't employ, what you call, the "left side of the brain." Joyce is
still a good example (he's even Irish!): His work seems so random, so
stream-of-consciousness, so *free*. But of cousrse he re-wrote and
re-wrote those books like mad. EVERYTHING in there is controlled. It's
very "left brain." He has an intricate (and intemidating) system relying
on puns and "third meaning" (that's where you juxtapose two unrealated
images, like -say- a nail and a fire engion, to create some new
meaning) and initials... And he contolled it all. It was his syntax and he
was a master of it -- OVER it -- just as Picasso and Klee were their's.
Let's return to ZMM, okay? In there he uses the terms "Romantic"
and "Classical" which seem to fit rather well your intuative freedom vs.
intellectual fetters schema. But surely you noticed that the book was
calling for a healing of this rift -- an at-one-ment of this schizm in our
mapping of Quality. Good motercycle maintinance employes both classic AND
romantic Q. And guess what, my friend? Good art also employes BOTH
romantic and classic Q. In fact some art is more classic than it is
romantic (like Johnathan Lasker for instance). Maybe most art is
primarily romantic... but some really good art ballances the two like the
yin-yang harmony (like Joyce or even ZMM -- both have strong R and C
appeal/Quality). The moral -- A moral -- of ZMM is that if you go
intierly one way and ignore the other then at best you miss out on a lot
and at worst you screw yourself over.
But doesn't Dynamic mean freedom from structure/control????
This question vexed me of late and I had a sort-of epifiny about
it which I put down in two posts called "DYANAMIC QUALITY" 1 and 2, from
mid-october. If you have access to them, please re-read them; if not let
me know and I'll send them to you. The Absolute (call it DQ if you must)
isn't the oposite of static/controlled/intellectual... whatever. It has no
opposite. It is the at-one-ment of all opposition (including static vs.
dynamic).
My other suggestion, Fintan, would be that you stop spending so
much time "bickering" w/ everyone on every little point. You're good
posts are the ones were you're just presenting an idea/insight -- not the
posts were you feel like you have to "defend yourself" or whatever. Don't
defend. Just bend in the breeze.
"Control! Control! You must learn control!"
-- Master Yoda (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK)
TTFN (ta-ta for now)
Donny
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