Nicely said Donny. Could you send me those DYNAMIC Q 1&2 posts.
All is well,
Rick
At 04:11 PM 11/23/98 -0500, you wrote:
>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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