April 12, 2022

 The Mediterranean Sea, from Vilanova i la Geltrú ....

In celebration of World Poetry Day 2022

 I first posted the poem below, a translation, to celebrate Barcelona's Poetry Week 2018. The original is Joan Timoneda's "Só qui só, from the version sung by Raimon. As will be obvious it's a love poem/song. It can be found on YouTube among other places. Wikipedia has information about Timoneda (~1518-1583) but as far as I can see only in Catalan and Spanish, although it should be easy enough to get that translated. So Happy Poetry Day---taking poetry in the ample sense of creative activity! The poem and translation:

Só qui só

Só qui só, que no só io,

Puix mudat d’amor me só.

Io crec cert que res no sia,

o, si só, só fantasia,

o algun home que somia

que ve alcançar algun do,

puix mudat d’amor me só.

Só del tot transfigurat;

só aquell que era llibertat,

i ara d’amors cativat

me veig molt fora raó,

puix mudat d’amor me só.

Sí só, puix que en lo món vixc

i a mi mateix avorrixc,

i segons que discernixc

veig la qui em dóna passió

puix d’amor mudat me só.

                                                                                          Joan Timoneda, 1556

My translation (version 1):

I am who I am

I am who I am, I am not I,

for by love changed am I.

I well believe that nothing is,

and, if I am, I’m fantasy,

or some man who dreams

he may attain some gift,

for by love I’m changed.

I am fully transfigured;

I am who was freedom,

and now by loves made captive

I see myself gone mad,

for by love am I changed.

Yet I am, for in the world I do live

And do weary even myself,

and by my discerning

do see her who fires my passion

for by love changed am I.

Virginia Woolf and war – an homage to Virginia Woolf and to #BreakTheBias

 

Virginia Woolf and war – an homage to Virginia Woolf and to #breakthebias

The writing of Virginia Woolf was bound to touch on the effects of war. She lived through both the first and second world war as well as the Boer war. As a pacifist, Woolf wrote against war and other violent situations, including, obviously, gender violence. In Mrs Dalloway, as I have written before, there is a basic duality established between Septimus Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway that reminds us of the suffering we’re currently seeing in world conflicts, not only in Ukraine. In the novel one protagonist is privileged, a person of means; the other, an ex-soldier who survives World War I, is unemployed, of penurious means. Poet and society matron. Male and female. Simplifying in this way is one way of coming to understandings of the ideas running through the book. And as always in Woolf there is highly careful planning behind the writing. But two other binary opposites, sane/insane, are of use here, especially as Woolf herself made use of them as she planned the book.

 Repetition of some of these words sets the novel to navigate around truth versus insane truth… At the same time the writing establishes doubt—the region of beauty, as Woolf terms it in the essay ‘Reading’—about the acuteness of Septimus Smith’s psychological trauma. Smith, the character, representative of so many people trapped in wars, may or may not be insane. But obviously the insanity of war makes up a great part of the writer’s societal indictment. But underlying the text is a fascinating use of suggestion woven in through the aforementioned series of key words or ideas as the personal perspectives of the book’s characters become clear through their thoughts and conversations. 

Given the world situation today, let us hope we can grow less violent and definitely break the bias!

Conflicts (2)

 

Conflicts (2)

 No, obviously it is far from easy to create in the harsh times we’re living through. The seeming impossibility of diplomatic solutions to the current conflicts in Ukraine, and for that matter of course in other parts of the world are part of the context in which we live and work. As noted in my previous post, I have gone to the work of John Dewey in search of ideas that may provide ways of finding peaceful solutions. So again I quote Dewey in regard to the use of diplomacy:

We have to analyze conditions by observations, which are as discriminating as they are extensive, until we discover specific interactions that are taking place, and learn to think in terms of interactions instead of force. We are led to search even for the conditions which have given the interacting factors the power they possess.

 Additionally, I think we must look at today’s ongoing protests against “Putin’s war” as an “interacting factor” rejecting the misuse of power and force of arms.*

 *The citation is from Dewey’s Freedom and Culture, 1939 (1963).

Conflicts

 

Conflicts

The current headlining focus on Ukraine and Russia is perhaps the biggest link in what amounts to a chain of conflicts—turmoils in various situations in the Middle East, in Africa, and elsewhere. Some of these situations involve full scale wars, others are perhaps less dire but may still involve disastrous living conditions for the people caught up in them.

The situations that lead to violent conflicts vary. Causes include territory, natural resources, water. Very often colonialist or neo-colonialist interests are at the heart of the problem.

Both globally and locally the concept of freedom or liberty is involved in such struggles, and this relates to power. For freedom is not only an abstraction but “effective power to do specific things,” in the words of John Dewey.*

In “The problem of freedom” the philosopher encourages us to look at the matter in the context of culture, “a state of interaction of many factors.”

It was important to Dewey not to isolate any one notion in the conversation, and I bring this up here because in spite of the vast number of texts being published on the current crisis I believe his words still resonate: “The fundamental postulate of the discussion is that isolation of any one factor, no matter how strong its workings at a given time, is fatal to understanding and to intelligent action.” 

I offer this short comment in the belief that violent conflict is not the answer to the problem.

* Cited in Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy, p. 435 (paperback).

Summer holidays

 

 

It isn’t only short trips like our recent ones between Barcelona and Vilanova i La Geltrú. Summer inspires longer trips as well, the kind that may require air travel, which obviously means adding to the world’s large carbon footprint. So thinking about ways to make travelling a part of the sustainable environment, I’ve looked around the web a bit for some ideas. An organisation called Sustainable Travel has information on this topic, including things like staying closer to home, investing in carbon offsets, generally slowing down. Their website is worth a read:

 

https://sustainabletravel.org/how-to-reduce-travel-carbon-footprint/

 

Also, on the theme of airplane travel, the Environmental Defense Fund speaks about the same themes but with a focus primarily on the aviation industry and vacationers. New information (to me, at least) includes the Carbon Offsetting Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. As much as 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions could be kept out of the atmosphere with full implementation of Corsia. The link on this is:

 

https://www.edf.org/climate/aviation

 

Finally, I looked in the direction of architecture. What I found is surprising and I’m going to save it. Don’t worry, you won’t have to wait long. I hope some good poetry (in the ample sense, whatever your creative activity) comes out of this. Stretch those desires….

expansion

 

expansion 

down binder steam, cloud,

today shouts powder dram,

musician-bright wedge

in steam panels—chipped

yellow rust, finely minnow.

akimbo, tick tock way

chaff fast one two or

experim e

 

experim       e

  

the     re

dr      ive

all       ure

star    e

str      ing

bol     d

the     ater

 

bremsstrahlung

 

bremsstrahlung
   

are many of these

trips south of fall

through porous spa

that edge will catch

your hand on vacation

sprain can get plums in the bran

bees in the flow

Buntings (2)

Later, thinking along the same lines as my text of 25 March, it occurred to me that effectively the graying brought about by the camera’s flash is like a broken color effect between two complementary colors. Then a comment by Helen Frankenthaler about her paintings came to mind, “I carry my landscape around with me.” Or words to that effect. I’m not sure I’ve put down her exact words. In any case, here are a few of my own chasings.

World Poetry Day 2017

World Poetry Day, yes.

Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry” has often been a source of inspiration. Thinking today about contemporary poems, and about the context and support offered by the internet, I paused over this section:

[Poets’] language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things, and perpetuates their apprehension, until the words which represent them, become through time signs for portions or classes of thoughts instead of pictures of integral thoughts; and then if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which have become thus disorganized, language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse […]. In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word the good which exists in the relation, subsisting first between existence and perception, and secondly between perception and expression. Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of Poetry.

Whatever your activity, your “poetry,” may it bring you happiness!

Trumpism. Rules. Roles

Trumpism. Rules. Roles.

Everybody has their own America, and they have pieces of fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see.  —Andy Warhol

The “rash and erratic president”—as a recent Washington Post article termed Donald Trump (1)—has continued to cause consternation on the world stage. But the basic tactic of this new administration is simple: to create smokescreens on important governance issues by a constant and chaotic crisismongering. Evoked much of the time, on a pragmatic level, are the worst features of things like cold wars and “détente”—not to mention xenophobia. The Trumpist’s ratcheting up of dystopian worldviews also brings to mind Wittgenstein’s notion of language games. Wittgenstein viewed speech acts as involving conversation based on “moves.” What people say, in other words, sets up a kind of competition.

Language games also involve the well known difference between denotation and connotation, as well as the possibility of falsification and legitimation. And then there are levels of games and types of games. As Jean-François Lyotard stated, “In the ordinary use of discourse, for example, in a discussion between two friends, the interlocutors use any available ammunition, changing games from one utterance to the next: questions, requests, assertions, and narratives are launched pell-mell into battle. The war is not without rules, but the rules allow and encourage the greatest possible flexibility of utterance” (2).   We would seem to be in the presence during some of these games of what Trump is fond of terming “fake news,” although it isn’t always certain just who is faking what. Consider, for that matter, revisions regarding Silicon Valley and “the Deep State” (3). And yes, even in an age of globalism, Wikileaks, and e-democracy.

Hopefully Lyotard’s militaristic metaphors serve as pragmatic reminders of what underlies discourse per se on a sociological level—magnified obviously on the geopolitical stage. “An institution differs from a conversation,” Lyotard (p. 17) also notes. Unfortunately the Trump administration doesn’t seem to recognize this.

Notes: (1) Robert Costa and Ashley Parker, “For 14 days Trump kept his No. 2 in the dark. What does that mean for Pence?” WP 15 February 2017.

(2) Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester UP, 1984 [1979], p. 17.

(3) As in Mike Lofgren. “Anatomy of the Deep State” <http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/>

Technical glitches

It seems that Google has decided to adopt a policy that keeps people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other Openld providers from being able to follow blogs by signing into Google Friend Connect.

Google is thus removing non-Google Account profiles from blogs like mine, which may keep some of you from seeing what I post without making some changes.

More detailed information on all of this is available through Blogger Help and in other spots on the web. In any case, if I make any changes of my own accord, I'll post here to let you know.

Obviously, I appreciate the kindness and interest of people following my posts here and elsewhere, including Twitter, where I occasionally post as WilliamBain7.

Finally, thanks to all for the interest shown, including comments on Google Plus.

Continued best wishes to all!

Dance

Ten dance axioms.

 

The world is all that is the case.

Colors dance, like form.

Form dances, like color.

Dance is a waveparticle.

Dance, well, uh, dances.

A wise ol’ critter, is ol’ Dance.

Dance is a styrofoam cup blown along the street while eating its breakfast.

Dance is differAnt readings to tease re-de-constructionists with.

Dance is the right to choose a channel.

Dance?

Postscript: The penultimate axiom restates Sean Snyder’s “Freedom is the freedom to choose a channel,” read in the video Schema (at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, till January 2008). Wittgenstein would, I think, agree. Thanks to Georg Pedersen and Round Online for the theme. More information on Snyder's work is available at the Stedelijk website and the website of the Israeli Center for Digital Art, which also includes outtakes from different videos.