Sorry, Nothing Clever

Favorite Examples of Sunlight in Songs

2010-02-26T02:24:00.005-05:00

"and the impending squint of
first light, that lurked behind
a weeping marquee in downtown Putnam
and would be pullin' up any minute now
just like a bastard amber
Velveeta yellow cab on a rainy corner
and be blowin' its horn, in every window
in town."
-Tom Waits "Putnam County"

"And the early dawn cracks out a carpet of diamond
Across a cash crop car lot
filled with twilight Coupe Devilles,
Leaving the town in a-keeping
Of the one who is sweeping
Up the ghost of Saturday night..."
-Tom Waits "Ghost of Saturday Night"

"Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers"
-Leonard Cohen "Suzanne"

"Who loves the sun
Who cares that it makes plants grow
Who cares what it does
Since you broke my heart"
-Velvet Underground "Who Loves The Sun"

Snow, Our Adversary and Invitation

2010-02-23T06:59:00.004-05:00

I find myself loathing snow. I used to love it as a kid like I'm sure most kids do but I passionately detest it now. I used to admire how it calmed the world. It is a blanket to dampen the harsh sounds and resolve the dead colors of modern life in all its hideous hustle and bustle. It was a reflection of my temperament. It was my inner longings thrown upon the world as if my imagination was aligned with the creator. It was both universal and personal when it snowed, a truly magical event.

Now I'm the one who has to hustle and bustle my way through errands full of harsh sounds and dead color. The tedium and boredom and necessity of getting by. And although I once hated doing this more than snow I have come to realize that the world most of us live in does not break for nature's hand. Rain or shine what has to be done, still has to be done. I can't change my seemingly endless need to schedule, work, drive, and purchase so snow has become my worse adversary.

Yet, it still reflects my temperament, as I'm sure it reflects everyone else when we need that calm, that cozy couch and blanket, that cup of coffee, that lazy day. It is both personal and universal. It is a Rothko imposing it's will not on the canvas but miles of the earths topography, allowing endless spaces for quiet meditation and harmony, re-rooting us in our humanity. To be put simply, it is good for the soul. But the world does not break for the soul. These moments can't be quantified. You can't buy anything with them. However meaningful they may be to us in our inner lives, they are meaningless in the construction of our lifestyles, which few of us have adequate control over.

I fear for myself when it snows, an inexperienced Virginian rolling around in my otherwise superb but currently inadequate car, but I fear for my friends, particularly my girlfriend Meghan driving to work in the morning. Lets us move to warmer climates, or never work where poor people are. Where there is no money there is no maintenance, and therefore no safe transportation. For those of you who live in Hartford or any poor place bordering a wealthy place, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Snow emphasizes the difference between the haves and have nots. It illustrates, as bright as day, the lack of accommodation for those who need it most, and the advantages and disadvantages we get away from thinking about when the weather is mild.

I now understand the romantic use of weather in stories to convey the inner state of characters. I once thought it was a contrived literary device but now I see the truth, the meaning of it in bloom. We are an organism always evolving through engagements with the environment. There is a sense of us and the world, me and the snow, but there really is no inside, and no outside. There are no hard edges, only endless relationships growing and changing in accord with one another. Strike another note on that piano, add another brush stroke to that painting, change that line in that poem, walk a little further up the road, throw a dash of spice into that recipe, watch the way the snow rest on your lawn and your neighbors roof. Watch the contents of your experience change. This is not addition. This is not 1 + 2 = 3. Summer is more than the addition of heat, winter is more than its absence because with every variable that comes and goes all else are affected. What has come has changed what was before; endless boundless relationships.

And relationships are so important. My friend and photographer Greg Russel spoke to me about how one doesn't always have to have human company to communicate. You can communicate with the trees, with the sky, with birds. It struck me as being a little too new age and if taken the wrong way I suppose it is. But if you think of communication as an act of relating oneself to something else, an emphasis on that relationship and others which are shared, than communication exists between everything and sometimes the Snow which is external to our will is just the thing we need to talk to.

Snow is like Socrates, a friend coming to irritate us, frustrate us, confuse us, and engage us in a dialogue which brings us to a greater self awareness. It is our adversary and our invitation. It is a mirror in which our longings stare us right in the eye. Maybe, with the aid of each other, we can build a world in which nature's voice is heard because it is also our voice, muzzled by the hustle and bustle of just getting by.

Robert Henri

2010-01-31T01:55:00.004-05:00

Lately I've been addicted to the work of Robert Henri. He is a painter's painter just like most the artist I really admire. After hours wrestling chaotically with brushes, oil, liquin, canvas, and paint I think about his economy and that of all great painters who simply mix the right color and put it down. Well not quiet simple. It takes a mind which measures and knows the relationships of light and color. It takes patience enough to try again and again to find what feels right. It takes a level of meditative concentration which I so desperately need in order to feel well. It's always an uphill battle against a culture which praises multi-tasking over true engagement in our activities, and tragically each other. Look at how much character he captures in this child's face. How often do we really take the time to see one another?

I'd like to sit and look and feel longer tonight but I have to be up tomorrow. I have to go sell things to people and practice talking them into purchases they don't need. I don't feel sorry for myself. I'm lucky to have a job and besides, who really has it good anyways?

To My Friend's From The University

2010-01-27T00:46:00.003-05:00

I'm trying to figure out where I want to apply for graduate school. Undergrad was so easy. My teacher Mr. Pehanich showed me some of Stephen Brown's work online and encouraged me to apply. I did but was still not so sure about moving to Connecticut but after visiting some of the school's which accepted me, University of Hartford was clearly the school for me. I was so excited about college and so excited about getting to study painting with Stephen. I remember orientation and the first couple weeks of college. It was warm, I was meeting new people, and was overwhelmingly confident and excited about my future. Now it is cold out and I really miss school. I particularly miss one day in particular. Classes were canceled due to bad weather and I was living around the corner in regents from Meg. The world was silenced by the snow. We played video games (shadow of the colossus), ordered Chinese food, and watched movies. It was freezing out but my recollection of it is filled with warm colors. It embodies all the simple things I miss about being in school. I miss eating a sandwitch at times of the day when there were few people in the market (like Saturday mornings when they were sleeping off hangovers from the previous nights), I miss all my classes in the art school and Philosophy department, I miss early mornings in the studio and freshmen year's all-nighters, I miss intense hours writing paper after paper in the library, and I really miss the kind of communal living that was shared amongst myself and my friends. Don't get me wrong I'm still a happy guy and college had its ups and downs. I just don't like the real world all that much. I am grateful that I still get to see Meg though, when I'm with her is when the world seems right again, and we still spend way to much time playing video games. I also like the friends I've made trough the residency at Billing's Forge. All in all people haven't changed I guess. I still have great relationships its just college was a place where those relationships could shape one's lifestyle, and now it is much harder to hang on to them. Human relationships aren't only treated as insignificant but often feel systematically trampled by our culture. So all in all I suppose I just want to say thanks to my friends for a great four years! It was nice in the make believe world.

HYPER!

2010-01-21T01:33:00.003-05:00

So, I am really hyper right now and this is so not the time of night to be hyper. It all started with Charles Mingus' Freedom, and before i knew it I had run my way from Radiohead to Cab Calloway to John Coltrane to Blind Willie McTell to Dereck Trucks to Buddy Guy and I'm currently thinking of skipping over to Miles Davis which generally leads me to Bill Evans and from there I may go back to Ravel and Debussy which will most likely lead me to Stravinsky which will lead me of Nobuo Uematsu (like a true video game playing dork) or maybe I'll stick with piano jazz and avoid the 19th century backtrack for now which may land me with Keith Jarret or Dave Brubeck or Thelonious Monk. Long story short I have too much music right now. My imagination is bursting at the seams and every damn piece I listen to inspires a thousand ideas for paintings and songs which I presently lack the resources to acomplish. What is wild to me is that at any given moment I may feel none of it but while I do I am just amazed at the endless forms of human expression and the never-ending dialogues between them. I could pop.

(I LOVE YOU MEGHAN!!!!
see, yes it does!)

2009-12-23T00:49:00.003-05:00

someday, ill post again, maybe... should i? is it worth the time? i always write too much anyways. maybe ill keep them short. i don't know.

Art and Meaning

2009-08-22T11:24:00.006-04:00

Because of the misconception that it is only through verbal language that meaning is expressed, the arts often go unappreciated. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate through the works of John Dewey, Mark Johnson, Donald Kuspit, and others the ways in which meaning is rooted in aesthetic bodily experience. Acts of expression must engage this realm of embodied understanding before verbal meaning can take place. Only then can the arts create a dialogue that is shared by all human beings regardless of nationality, gender, ethnicity, and culture. Our experiences are more than what is found in our concepts and verbal communication. Our collective potential to build a more educated, constructive and creative future relies on our acceptance of the shared bases for meaning that the aesthetic can access.

These shared bases for meaning cannot be achieved through conformity to strict ideological systems, or through a relativism that treats subjective truths as arbitrary. In the arts the first standpoint represents itself in dogmatic adherence to aesthetic canons and "isms" that all claim to express the truth about the human condition. The latter reveals itself in disregard to the aesthetic experience all together. It isn’t uncommon to hear people say that art is all a matter of opinions that result from culturally biased standpoints. For people who adopt this ideology there is no common ground in which art can be experienced on a shared human level. These two standpoints may appear in opposition to each other but are more similar than different in that they attribute meaning to some higher source, whether that source is believed to be real, which results in absolutism, or absent resulting in a destructive form of nihilism. Neither of these paths are constructive, and in order to move forward, meaning must be rooted not in brittle doctrines, but human experience itself. We often attribute human meaning to the mind and demote the sensuous experiences provided by the arts to the body (which is in itself thought to be inferior to the mind). Because of this, an understanding of the meaning in aesthetic experience relies on the rejection of mind-body dualism.

The pragmatist philosopher John Dewey understood this. He searched and argued for a principle of continuity that involves an ontological continuity between the mind and body. You cannot have one theory of being that explains our ability to use abstract concepts and another that explains our felt bodily experience. In the book Art as Experience this principle is brought to the arts. Dewey writes that those of us who wish to philosophize about the fine arts must attempt to “restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience” (Dewey 2). By this he means that one's experience of a work of art is not something separate or imposed on life but a part of it. Often we do not notice the aesthetic significance of ordinary experiences. Dewey writes, "The man who poked the sticks of burning wood would say he did it to make the fire burn better; but he is none the less fascinated by the colorful drama of change enacted before his eyes and imaginatively partakes in it. He does not remain a cold spectator" (Dewey 3). For Dewey the struggle was against those who treated any attempt to ground the higher or ideal realm of experience (such as art) with the vital roots of experience as a betrayal of their nature and denial of their value (Dewey 20). In the modern era, meaning in experiencing a work of art is obscured and lost because we lose sight of the value and meaning of experience in general. In the modern world there has been an enforced separation of the “mode of activity commonly called practice from insight, imagination from executive doing, of significant purpose from work, of emotion from thought and doing” (Dewey 21). In a world like this, Dewey writes:

We undergo sensations as mechanical stimuli or as irritated stimulations, without having a sense of the reality that is in them and behind them. . . . We use the senses to arouse passion but not to fulfill the interest of insight, not because that interest is not potentially present in the exercise of sense but because we yield to conditions of living that force sense to remain an excitation on the surface. Prestige goes to those who use their minds without participation of the body and who act vicariously through control of the bodies and labor of others. (Dewey 21)

Often relatively little value or status is put into our aesthetic felt experiences. Perhaps this is why I can’t even begin to recall all the times I have listened to intelligent people from various disciplines refer to the pursuit of artistic excellences as impractical, useless, self-absorbed, pretentious, and absolutely meaningless. On numerous occasions I’ve met students whose parents threaten to stop sending money unless they go into the commercial arts. A friend’s parents refused to help her pay for art school despite her merit scholarship for her portfolio because “it won’t teach you common sense.”

Mark Johnson, like Dewey, continues the task of restoring the continuity between meaning and everyday experience through the book The Meaning of the Body. In this book Johnson gives compelling arguments for how meaning is made up of felt bodily experience. He pursues the issue on many fronts, which include references to the pragmatist philosophy of Dewey and James, child development, discoveries in neuroscience, conceptual metaphors and image schemas, and a compelling argument for grounding our abstract concepts and logic in our body. For my purposes it is unnecessary to illustrate every argument in his book, but I will take the time to briefly elaborate on some of the key points.

Johnson argues that adults are all “big babies.” By this he means that our ways of constructing meaning as adults go back to the ways in which infants experience and grow to make sense of the world. Infants must learn the meaning of objects and events that adults take for granted through their sensorimotor and conceptual capacities, which are developed through ongoing experiences with the outside world. Johnson cites the results of surveys done by Eleanor Gibson and Anne Pick on child development. They concluded that there are three stages of infant development. The first is communication, in which infants immediately learn how to respond in order to get nourishment, care, and affection. Then there is object perception and manipulation. In this stage infants learn through the use of physical interaction with the world that they can use objects to achieve desired effects. In the third stage, bodily motion, children learn through moving around their environment a “world of meaningful objects and possibilities for accomplishing goals and realizing intentions” (Johnson 36). All of this is done through “bodily perceptual capacities, motor functions, posture, expressions, and ability to experience emotions and desire.” These capacities are “at once bodily, affective, and social.” They do not require language and are the basic ways in which humans make sense of the world (Johnson 35-36).

Johnson also cites the work of developmental psychologist Colwyn Trevarthen. Trevarthen writes that the infant, through bodily gesture, makes a statement of feeling, and the caregiver reacts in complementary ways. This creates an engagement he calls a proto-conversation (Johnson 39). This connection does not end with infants. There is growing evidence for the mirror-neuron system. When one observes another performing an action, the observer’s motor cortex will be partially activated as if they were to perform that action themselves (Johnson 39-49). This all suggests that we have built into us the ability to communicate and empathize through the body without the aid of language.

In drawing classes, when trying to accurately capture what I will call the meaning in a pose, students are sometimes instructed to physically imitate the model. There is a felt bodily connectedness, an empathy that must be achieved. This is why, while watching a dance, so much emotion can be generated in the observer. We feel reflected in our own physical and emotional states the movements of the performers on stage. It may be why the human figure is one of the most enduring forms in Western art. It is why even abstract forms such as those in the works of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning carry a sense of physicality without the figure as a pictorial subject. We connect with the physical motion of the artist through a bodily understanding rooted in the emotional qualities of their gesture. This is why mark making is not just a tool for depicting symbols or describing borders, but a mode of expression it itself.

Meaning is also known and expressed through what psychologist Daniel Stern calls vitality affects. They are not emotions in the sense that anger, joy, or fear are emotions but patterns in the flow of experience. Stern writes “These elusive qualities are better captured by dynamic, kinetic terms, such as ‘surging,’ ‘fading away,’ ‘fleeting,’ ‘explosive,’ ‘crescendo,’ ‘decrescendo,’ ‘bursting,’ ‘drawn out,’ and so on.” These qualities are experienced through all of our sensory and motor capacities (Johnson 43). An infant experiences all of these vitality effects in the bang of something falling off the shelf, the light caress of a mother’s touch, the anticipation of desiring a toy, and the reward of achieving it in one’s possession. These vitality effects are not just the qualitative changes in how we experience the world but also how we experience and communicate through art. A painting may feel “quiet” or “still.” The marks one makes can be gentle and loving or brutal and violent. They may express the peak of action or a crescendo of events or the steady flow of lonesome observation. The language of infants and the language of the arts are the same. They are both expressions of the quality of experience and are based in the interaction of a living creature and its environment.

Johnson writes that “When we grow up, we do not shed these embodied meanings or our bodily ways of meaning-making. Instead, we appropriate and recruit them in what we might think of as our more refined, abstractive modes of understanding and thinking.” He continues that:

we are not solitary, autonomous creatures who individually and singly construct models of our world in our head. On the contrary, we learn about our world in and through others. We inhabit a shared world, and we share meaning from the start, even if we are completely unaware of this while we are infants. (Johnson 51)

Meaning does not come from a higher source or mind that transcends the body. It is not in the objects of the world either. Meaning exists in the engagement between an organism and its environment. Johnson refers to this as body-environment coupling (Johnson 51).

One of the most insightful and useful passages in understanding embodied meaning comes from the philosopher Eugene Gendlin. He questions, when we are writing a letter, a poem, or an essay, how we know which words to use. How do we know when to stop and try again when something just doesn’t seem right? The quality of your experience went from a harmonious flow to a frustrating block. You struggle to find the right words, but how do you know when you find them? Gendlin writes:

The poet reads the written lines over and over, listens, and senses what these lines need (want, demand, imply…). Now the poet’s hand rotates in the air. The gesture says that. Many good lines offer themselves; they try to say, but do not say—that. The blank is more precise. Although some are good lines, the poet rejects them.

That … seems to lack words, but no. It knows the language, since it understands—and rejects—these lines that came. So it is not pre-verbal; Rather, it knows what must be said, and knows that these lines don’t precisely say that. It knows like a gnawing knows what was forgotten, but it is new in the poet, and perhaps new in the history of the world. (Gendlin)

The reason for this, as Johnson writes, is that “you have meaning or are caught up in meaning, before you actually experience meaning reflectively” (Johnson 79). This “. . .” is not limited to just writing. It is the same struggle that an artist goes through when finding the right color or brush mark. It is the same struggle a musician goes through in finding the right articulation of a passage. We are all striving toward a felt sense of meaning that could be called a felt truth. Overcoming the “. . .” leads to a sense of accomplishment and accuracy in expression that runs deeper than mere rendering. Ultimately what all this brings us to is that despite our differences, which are so often emphasized in our culture, we have basic ways of experiencing and understanding the world that are inherently human. These experiences and the means by which we create meaning do not give us the absolute objective truth about the world, but they do provide common human truths.

In his closing chapter, "The Meaning of the Body," Johnson addresses numerous implications of his work. One topic entitled "Embodied spirituality" addresses some of the concerns one may have about embracing embodied meaning. In this passage Johnson divides spirituality into two possible conceptions of transcendence. One is vertical transcendence. This is “the alleged capacity to rise above and shed our finite human form and to ‘plug into’ the infinite.” Throughout human history we have struggled against “our finiteness, which each of us experiences as limitation, weakness, dependence, alienation, loss of meaning, absence of love, and anxiety over sickness and death.” If vertical transcendence were possible, it would be the answer to these problems. The other conception of transcendence is horizontal transcendence. This form of transcendence is compatible with human finitude, and embodied meaning. It consists in our ability to go beyond our current situations through creative acts that transform ourselves and our world. We are apart of a “human and more-than-human ongoing process in which change, creativity, and growth of meaning are possible.” Horizontal transcendence transforms how we look at terms that traditionally are valued as being something beyond and above embodied meaning:

Faith thus becomes faith in the possibility of genuine, positive transformation that increases richness of meaning, harmony among species, and flourishing, not just at the human level, but in the world as an ongoing creative development . . . None of this is grounded in the infinite, but rather in the creative possibilities of finite human experience. It gives each of us more good work to do than we can possibly realize within our lifetime. (Johnson 281-283)

While ideological standards may bring about self-righteousness, the judging and alienation of others, and an inability to cope with new and complex problems, an emphasis on human experience on a shared and common level could satisfy needs and solve problems with humility and adaptability. I do not believe that this necessitates the rejection of all forms of vertical transcendence, such as belief in god or an afterlife, so long as it can have a relation to horizontal transcendence that is compliant and constructive. You don’t have to look too far to see examples of desperate longing and dissatisfaction in people’s lives. As a community we should be trying to employ the resources available to us through our various disciplines to relieve others and help with the struggle of accomplishing a life that is more than just getting by. The arts can help those who are in need of aesthetic beauty. This may sound trivial, but remember that the aesthetic nature of experience reaches down to the very foundation of how we build meaning in our lives.

This is not to say that that meaning is easily accessible by all people. The previous arguments are in support of a level of universality in human aesthetic experience, but by no means is this intended to be a walk in the park. Our own traditions and previous personal experiences influence our aesthetic experiences. When I was in Prague with some classmates of mine we visited a Gothic cathedral. I was moved by the contrast of the dark wooden interior and the piercing intensity of the stained glass windows. I could appreciate the peace of mind it gave me just through the sheer aesthetic power of the interior. The colors that dominated the stained glass were cool blues and greens, which gave the light flowing into the cathedral an otherworldly atmosphere. It wasn’t the religion of the place that grabbed me but the art. My classmates did not share my enthusiasm. One in particular called the interior oppressive. It’s no fault of his to feel this way. Many have experiences that make them uncomfortable with various religious centers. Nonetheless, it is important to understand that one could appreciate and feel the beauty and power of the cathedral without being a member of the church.

I, for example, am not a descendent of the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, yet when I visited the Native American ruins in Chaco Canyon, and watched one particular Pueblo perform a ceremonial dance, I was deeply struck by a sense of common truth, or better yet, common harmony that exists in the aesthetic of their ceremony. I can’t understand all the meaning to their dance, but to say that I was an isolated, cold spectator due to cultural differences would be foolish. After breathing the air of New Mexico and feeling the weight and deafening silence of the landscape in Chaco Canyon, I knew when they struck their drums that something was resonating inside of me. It was so particular and so right. It was music like none I had ever heard that so appropriately harmonized with a landscape I had never experienced. I knew in that moment that there was a shared experience between us, the spectators, and the performers. There was a shared sense of wonder. No institution, religion, or ideology has a monopoly on the power and importance of aesthetic experiences because they speak directly to our experience as embodied human beings.

What does all of this say about art and its relationship to religion? Throughout the history of humanity artistic expression has been regulated, commissioned, and created to serve various religious institutions. This has been the case in music, architecture, painting, poetry, dance, and many more modes of expression that are foreign to our Western traditions. The question now, I believe, is Does it have to be that way? Art has celebrated vertical transcendence for centuries, but if the beauty in those works is not bound completely to the ideology under which they were created, can there then be art that celebrates horizontal transcendence? In a sense, all meaningful works of art celebrate horizontal transcendence in that they have to speak to our experience as embodied beings in order for us to get meaning out of them at all. Take, for example, Michelangelo's "Pieta." Two individuals may look at the piece, one a devout Christian and the other a nonbeliever. The Christian may look at the work and think about the miracle of Mary's virgin birth and Christ's death and resurrection, all of which are examples of vertical transcendence. The nonbeliever may know these stories, but they won't have the same meaning. Nevertheless, what both viewers can empathize with in the work is the relationship between a mother and her child. You don't have to be Christian to be heartbroken by the image of a mother holding her dead son in her arms. This image speaks directly to our finite human experience and is an example of horizontal transcendence. It grounds us in our compassion and humanity, which is a noble accomplishment. It fills us with an emotional (perhaps conscious) awareness of the value and richness of life. No matter what your beliefs are about Christ and Mary, ask yourself if there could be any meaning to this work at all if it did not touch us on this human level? Another important question to ask is how such experiences contribute to our lives? What use do we have for the meaning we take with us after looking at great art. Like all experiences, this meaning comes out of body-environment coupling and is never arbitrary. Like all organisms, it results in the construction of means toward survival. Dewey elaborates on this:

In the process of living, attainment of a period of equilibrium is at the same time the initiation of a new relation to the environment, one that brings with it potency of new adjustments to be made through struggle. . . . But, through the phases of perturbation and conflict, there abides the deep-seated memory of an underlying harmony, the sense of which haunts life . . . (Dewey 16)

Art for Dewey is very much a part of this struggle. It comes out of that “deep-seated memory of an underlying harmony.” But how can that be? How does art connect with our struggle for survival in the world? Many would argue that it serves no function. It seems to many that unlike farming and many other occupations it has no obvious use in sustaining life. To better understand this, it is useful to look at Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh knew the struggle for equilibrium in a dangerous, hostile world quite well through his relapses into insanity and depression. Between these relapses he painted with great discipline and faith. The art critic Donald Kuspit writes:

van Gogh wanted “to accomplish something with heart and love in it.” His art preached universal empathy rather than blind obedience to aesthetic law. It was informed by the spirit not the letter of religion; a painting was a spontaneous sermon rather than a theological lesson in correct religious thinking . . . (Kuspit 146)

The secular sermons that van Gogh gave through painting is a fine example of what Mark Johnson calls embodied spirituality. Van Gogh’s work does not promise us eternal salvation but it does serve the purpose of uplifting us through aesthetic embodied experience.

This raises the question of what art as a secular sermon means. What resolution, what peace of mind can one get from a work of art? Kuspit writes that when faced with our own mortality, we lose our ability to manage our own feelings and mind. But through the arts

the self can plumb the depths of destruction and death in itself and the world. It can never fathom them, but art enables the self to explore their effect on its sense of life, which gives it some hold on itself despite its insecurity. Art can never give it the enlightenment of the Buddha, but aesthetic experience can show the self that life is not futile, however limited. (Kuspit 190)

He continues that “Pure intellect is a poor defense against the traumatic ugliness of life compared to art, for ugliness has to be defended against with the whole psyche not simply a part of it” (Kuspit 190). If meaning is based in the body, then aesthetic experiences speak directly to how we construct meaning, and that makes the aesthetic fundamental in the psyche’s defense against the ugliness of the world. All our abstract ideas and concepts used to defend and protect ourselves from suffering are based in the aesthetic of experience. Without the aid of the aesthetic we cannot cope and enjoy passages of triumph over human suffering. The arts make it so that, while reflecting upon death and destruction, “we no longer compulsively brood about them, as though that would bring them into intellectual focus” (Kuspit 191). Like positive aesthetic experiences, suffering too knows no boundaries. No ideology or institution can contain it.

Kuspit speaks of ugliness as the underlying state of things when he writes that “the aesthetic pleasure beauty gives always has a mournful, poignant undertone. . . . Scratch a work of art and one will discover the urgent ugliness beneath its beauty—the rupture within its harmony. . .” (Kuspit 187). Dewey on the other hand speaks of “the deep-seated memory of an underlying harmony, the sense of which haunts life” (Dewey 16). Whether ugliness underlies harmony or harmony underlies ugliness, what truly matters is that as organisms searching for harmony with our environment we are constantly engaged in living out a rhythm between the two. I will not call it good and evil, because that implies entities beyond the body. What I will call it is the ongoing struggle for survival. The creation of art is a way in which we keep our head above water as we face new challenges. Making art is more than just the venting of one individual’s thoughts. It is a means by which we all can share and reflect on experience. It is a necessary service to the greater community of people with whom it is shared. Without engaging ourselves and the world around us with aesthetic experiences, we are stunted and incapable of meeting the demands life makes on us.

Works Cited

Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago & London: The U of Chicago P, 2007. Print

Dewey, John. Art as experience. New York: Perigee Books, 1980. Print.

Kuspit, Donald. The End of Art. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.

Gendlin, Eugene T. "Crossing and Dipping." The Focusing Institute. Web. 27 July 2009. http://www.focusing.org/gendlin.html.

I miss Jeremiah's Classes

2009-07-19T23:31:00.000-04:00

First Drawing in College

2009-07-19T23:28:00.003-04:00

Matt Morello drew his guitar too, only his drawing was a lot better.

After talking to Adam Ferris about photography I grew to miss it and decided to post some of my photos from a few years ago

2009-07-19T23:00:00.011-04:00

2009-07-17T23:09:00.002-04:00

I dropped Patrick off at the airport this morning. I wish I had a flight to go on myself. I fantasize about traveling to some place far away where I'll know no one but won't have to talk to strangers. An entire city, or maybe a mountain, or a beach, to myself.

It's been a long time

2009-06-29T07:55:00.005-04:00

It has been a long time since I have posted anything on this blog. From time to time I felt frustrated and disappointed that I quit updating it. The past school year had been an extremely difficult one and in order to keep up with my studies I simply did not have the time. And when school ended I felt so lost and overwhelmed that I no longer could make enough sense of my own life to bother writing anything. That is until this morning. The inspiration came about naturally, organically really. It was not planned. And that's what I want to write about; not planning.

I've recently returned home from Connecticut. My timing has been impeccable seeing as my friends Sean Bullock and Dustin Klein are both in town but soon to be leaving. Seeing those guys as well as my good friends Jackson Howell and David Smith have been wonderful. The days have been filled with rich conversation, jam sessions in the park, midnight milkshakes at the Village Cafe, and a party full of faces I haven't seen in a long time. I'll elaborate on some of these events soon but let me just say that with the good times I've been having there has also been the slow creep of alienation. Virginia feels foreign to me at times now. I love my friends but don't know what home is anymore.

The changes in the air of places (which I have recently been trying to capture in water color studies) such as the orange of Virginia which mutes the blues of the sky, the lime green of the vegetation in southern Vermont/northern Massachusetts, and the soft pinks I found along the Mohawk river in upstate new york all seem to penetrate the way people think and move. Here in Virginia there is a haze which blurs distinction (like the dusk in the writings of the Czech philosopher Kohak which is when distinctions are possible but boundaries fade; a time for philosophy. Day is the time for techne and night the time for poetry.) Perhaps the humidity's perpetual haze permeates into us. The lack of clarity seems to mirror a looseness in our behavior for better or worse. The worse being the ways in which ambiguity floods our conversations. We say so much and listen so much and all the while there is a state of suspension. Did my words meet you? Did our thoughts touch? Do you see what I see? There is rarely a cold rejection but likewise rarely a promise of validation. So much speech feels inappropriate. There is too little time to rush.

Maybe it's in the air. Maybe its in the histories of drug abuse. Maybe it's in the incompatibility of the various paradigms we have adopted. Maybe it's in 4 years of separation fighting against 4 years of intimacy. Maybe it's like Bob Dylan says:

It's a restless hungry feeling
That don't mean no one no good,
When ev'rything I'm a-sayin'
You can say it just as good.
You're right from your side,
I'm right from mine.
We're both just one too many mornings
An' a thousand miles behind.

And as frustrating and occasionally painful as it all is where we connect there is a burst of creativity. At byrd park we sat on a green bench over looking the pond with the island in the middle. Few words were spoken. We all took out our instruments. My black acoustic strung with heavy strings for a darker voice, and Dustin's red acoustic with its light weight strings for a brighter voice, and David with his cello. I began to strum Emaj to C maj7 and after a few measures they joined in over me. Dustin is a self taught musician, I am a mediocrity on guitar (having left that talent in neglect with all my other skills for painting), and David is on a free ride to a conservatory in New Orleans for Cello. David is amazing. All three of us are at very different skill levels but somehow we made it work. I told David about how music becomes a part of the air of a place and it did that afternoon. Listening to him play arpeggios rapidly as the sun danced on the surface of the lake was awe inspiring. We blurred into the surroundings, into each others imaginations. I love loosing myself in music. This can only happen with an openness to the spontaneity music inspires in its surroundings. It seems to suck the drama out of every mundane object and leave it glistening on the surface. One's surroundings are a place to adapt and seek harmony within. It isn't through rigidity or chaotic action that this is done. It's through living in the moment and acting acordingly.

One individual approached us who must have known this well. He was an older black man with two children. Before introducing himself he borrowed my guitar which was in open G so he gave it back and took Dustin's. Immediately a very rythmic blues followed which Dustin and David soon joined in on. It was awesome! Afterwords he gave back the guitar and I shared with them a somber chord progression I had been working on. They all joined in, the older man improvising lyrics about our immediate surroundings which was both beautifully genuine and genuinely hilarious.

"kids play in the park mmmmm. . . . . LOOKIN' AT A DUCK!"

Later we went to Alex Criqui's where Sean Bullock and Jackson joined us. Dustin showed us his video "Shape." It was a very impressive animation about geometry in the world full of swirling fractles, ancient symbols, narration, music, colors, and ofcourse shapes. It illustrated and propagated the idea that the idea that the universe runs principally on mathematical models. I fundamentally disagree with this and see these models as tools used to accomplish certain goals. These models come about as naturally and as planned as any creative act. That is to say that there is a context in which there is a human problem to be resolved. Something must be happening that is like our models in some sense of the word in order for our models to be useful but forcing the idea that geometry is the answer to the big questions of life I fear may have rendered my friend a bit static. He can be a bit of an absolutist and I think of myself as being more of a pragmatist but that's alright. Dustin and I differ on this point but none the less his presentation was exciting, insightful, and illustrated some of the beauty of mathematics.

We then went to a party where Soyoung and a lot of kids from MICA were. It was fun. Danielle asked questions about post art school life and Sean told a stories about his escaped con cowoker and her adventure running from the law with a man who printed his own money. We listened to records and talked about Michael Jackson's death. It was a lot of fun and made me wish I went to more parties.

Jackson had to leave to go to another party but before doing so stoped by the Village Cafe with Sean and I for a late night milkshake. He told us about how he is no longer into studio art and wants to pursue writing. An interesting discussion on how to go about writing or creating art in general started. Jackson told us about how he didnt want to plan things out too much. He just wanted to write when he felt inspired to about what ever inspired him so that it would come about honestly and expressively. I know that every worthwhile piece of art I've ever done carried an element of spontaniety where I didn't comepletely know what I was doing until it was done. It was "reactionary" as Jackson put it. Reacting perpetually to the richness of felt experience is a much better road than doing what Sean says he did. Sean worked with an agenda. When he wrote fiction he wrote because he already had something to say. It would read rigid cold and well like he had an agenda. It's funny because in Sean's non fiction, and too my surprise something he wrote to me on the fly (which for years I thought was a story he had written and spent a great deal of time on) he can be hilarious, tragic, and extremely moving. All of this reminded me of what Power Boothe, my dean at the art school, said about art. He said "a painting can't lie." By this he meant that it always comes though. If you were in a state of awe when you painted it will come though. If you "jumble together a bunch of things to try to make a statement it will read as you jumbled a bunch of things together to try to make a statement." When things speak to our experience they must speak to the here and now. Jackson had a very intimate understanding of the importance of all this. He has matured a great deal and has a wisdom about him. I can't wait to read some of the stories he's getting started on.

Overall my first full day back was more than I could hope for. I've learned in the days which have followed through more conversations with Jackson and other friends as well that our relationships are not above the same values problems which affect our philosophies, art, music, and writing. It's hard seeing everyone change but you have to grow and it can be wonderfully productive. When people give each other space they can come back to a friendship with new insights and new creations. It is productive. In the future I think I'll try to be more patient. I've always been a somewhat impulsive person and I've grown weary of myself. I want things to creep up on me. I want to be surprised by new experiences and create art which surprises me. No more stiffness, no more worrying about having something important to say. I just want to live my life as richly and deeply as possible and I am thankful to my wonderful circle of friends all throughout the country for helping me along.

2008-10-16T00:47:00.002-04:00

As much as I have written in this blog it is a surprise to me that I sort of forgot it even exists. This semester has been unbelievably busy with Advanced Painting, Special Topics: Large Figurative Painting, Intro to Etching, Independent study in Egg Tempera, Intermediate Figure Drawing, Philosophy of Science, and Precepting for a First Year Seminar called the Philosophy of Friendship. All my classes are awesome! I just have so many. What am I doing? I must be foolish to put myself in this situation. I can't bring myself to drop anything and back down either. I just hope I pull through and I'll probably get back to posting on here on the holiday breaks.

2008-08-28T13:36:00.001-04:00

I'm finally getting a grip on things. woo hoo. life is good.

2008-08-20T22:03:00.002-04:00

Well, here I am, laying on the living room floor of my new apartment in the west end of Hartford. I'm so damn lonely I can't believe it. There just isn't any way out! It'll be great to see friends again and there company will improve things dramatically for me, but they are not family. and its so typical of me to miss my family after feeling so miserable and angry around them. I felt like my character was being eroded and I was forgetting right from wrong, couldn't tell up from down, and simply felt so confused and angry I didn't know what to do with myself. I'd be foolish to think these feelings were untrue and that I didn't have my reasons for feeling the way I did. It's just now I miss them. I wish I had more quality time with them. Just siting in the same room doesn't mean your together. Its just so heavy at home. I am exhausted of it and yet here I am missing Virginia so bad. Yesterday I felt relieved by the cool new england air. It brought back memories of my feet dipped in the cold water from the dock on Bradley brook and them sliping and sliding on the moss covered rocks as I splashed with my cousins. I could remember the Hacienda (a cabin built by and until a few years ago owned by my family) and the worms that came up out of the soil in Canastoda when it rained. I remember Grandpa Bun and the Fisher farm. I miss all of that. Now I also miss the big dry bleached rocks along the James River. I miss the swampy air and how I don't feel quite at home until I get that sting of sweat in my eye. I miss the cafes and the neighborhoods. I miss the confidence that came from knowing the 50 miles surrounding your home like the back of your hand.

All of this just hit me. I felt fine earlier today while moving in. Matej helped me which was so kind of him and we had a great time eating lunch at Ruby Tuesdays. Then Meg came over and I can't believe how quickly our time together passed. Seems like a few minutes ago she was pulling up off of Farmington ave. and I was standing on the corner waving her towards a parking place. We drove around. Stopped by the campus library (which had just closed), ate some Thai food, walked around all those new places around west Hartford, went to blockbuster and rented American Psycho, watched Persepolis (which I bought her for her birthday) and then suddenly it's too late to watch American Psycho. She had to get home because she was getting too tired to drive safely. I asked her to lay with me for a few minutes and held her very close to me. I realized just how lonely I was about to be.

She's on the road now. I'm waiting for her to call to let me know shes back in Woodberry alright. I think I'll do some drawing or something. Try and make the best out of my time alone. Tomorrow will be full of errands I don't even know how to do yet.

2008-08-16T17:33:00.002-04:00

I think I'm ready to go back to school. This summer has been too much. I am buckling under the weight and feel so angry all the time. I'm loosing my ability to reason clearly and hardly holding on to a sense or morality and principles I once performed well. I used to think I was good at doing the right thing but its so much harder when you find that nobody else is. I hope everything works out for the best back in Connecticut. I plan on making some major lifestyle changes. I want to live in a way that I can feel good about. I want to eat healthy, go swimming everyday, work long and hard in the studio, sleep at a descent hour, read a lot and go out with Meghan whenever I can. I also want a bike.

Changing Perceptions

2008-08-14T00:50:00.007-04:00

It amazes me how words, like everything else loose and gain depth and meaning. It reminds me of the healthy-minded and sick-soul in James. Or just how bouts of depression cause me to gain and loose meaning in the experience of the world around me. I was told that philosophy was affected my art in that the act of observation is apparent. At the time I didn't understand why or how this would be the case clearly but now I see why. Perceptions fluctuate in the fashion expressed above and I want to express the fluctuation in art. I've come to realize that I cannot capture this through conscious planning. I will have to work through my own fluctuation and express the dualities as I experience them. It will be my best attempt at an objective representation of my subjective states of being.

Now the thought of doing this makes me feel optimistic in that capturing my own changing perceptions may give me a greater insight into my own imperfect self. Our means of perception are a tool we use to create an impression of the world around us and as in any craft the product is altered by the tool which makes it. Trying to do paintings which capture the passing depth and emptiness one can experience in a single object may give me a chance at having a more objective view at myself by seeing my own perceptions held together, frozen, outside of their temporal order. After all the painting, like any painting is as much about the object as it is a self portrait.

Doing this would require myself to "get into character" in order to complete these paintings. I will have to feel the feelings I'm intending on expressing and this leaves me with a very odd and uncomfortable feeling. Usually I think of art, as I assume many do, as something which, like impressions, is marked by the tool which created it (the artist). But now I see that I must shape myself to the work on a much deeper and profound level than I ever imagined. The tool shapes the object which shapes the tool. It is emotionally taxing.

(Sean and I had a conversation about how many of the musicians I like are also actors and he said that both involve getting into character. Art does too. This relationship between art and object reminds me of Pierce's semiotics. It also reminds me of something I saw on television which had profound implications to me. On the program "How the Earth was Made" they talked about the oceans being oxidized by the waste product from early organisms over millions of years. I have heard so often that conditions for life on earth have to be so perfect for us to exist but now it is clear to me that previous life forms came about in an environment which they adapted to themselves, which in turn caused the adaptations of newer life forms, and so on. We are changed by and change our environment. The tool shapes the object which shapes the tool.)

With all this said I feel further invested in my acceptance of my own subjective self. With this comes a difficult struggle to find a sense of truth. Who is right, the Miguel that sees meaning in those words, or the Miguel that sees them as empty. I prefer to think the previous because the later comes out of negative states of mind, but that doesn't guarantee that it's false. And although I feel overwhelmingly compelled towards meaning and purpose I can't help but be shaken by doubt. It reminds me of the following passage Sean wrote me in response to my paper on James (linked above):

Actually I've had a back and forth with myself as to whether it is enjoyment of life or suffering which is the self deception. On the one hand, we could all be repressing how awful everything is and trying to pretend to be happy; however, on the other it is possible that all things enjoy life (as evidenced by every creatures incredibly strong self preservation instincts) and that suffering is merely a sensation, an equally important and enjoyable part of existence as happiness.

In all I feel as if I'm brought back to a conclusion I came to earlier this summer. In giving up the absolute truth, I have also given up my confidence in my own perception. Of course I say confidence, because those who are most confident in there perceptions of how the world is and should be, are sometimes the most unreasonable and insane, as I'm sure many of us know.

Pluralism is emotionally taxing because it still stands for something despite the overwhelming weight of relativism; a weight which isn't in itself heavy. In fact it is light, intolerably light. Whats heavy is meaning, when one tries to set it on a foundation perpetually in flux, a foundation which ultimately is ourselves.

Content

2008-08-03T23:13:00.002-04:00

All summer I have been beating myself up trying to figure out what content I want in my work. I have had moments of inspiration which quickly fade and feel a little depressed and discouraged every time i try to set my mind to something. I have realized that there are two main categories I am interested in exploring. There are intimate paintings I have ideas for such as portraits of family members, memories form childhood, and pieces with figures depicting psychological tensions between one another. Then I have ideas which are more based in my interest in philosophy and scientific discovery. I want to paint new world views, perceptions of what and who we are in the universe, but with the religious power and awe done throughout history in religious art. One idea I had was to do large paintings based on images of distant galaxies or ocean landscapes which resonate something primordial. Sometimes I think about painting animals. Massive powerful horses and bigger than life buffalo. So I do have some ideas and writing this has helped me think them out. I need to go do something. I've been too unproductive. I'm letting myself down.

2008-07-31T00:26:00.000-04:00

I made another page showing some of my artwork. Check it out http://miguelcarterfisherart.blogspot.com/

Tom Waits and Acquired Taste

2008-07-17T13:37:00.003-04:00

I've been listening to a lot of Tom Waits lately and thinking about how it's always an aquired taste. It takes me time to get into each album. Too many people don't have the patience to really get it. Either its too rough or too sintemental. And this isn't just for Tom Waits. This goes for just about anything. Theres so much to be into, so much to enjoy. Most taste I have had to aquire have opened me up to new colors, tectures, images, rythms, ideas, and all around experiences. I feel sorry for anyone who cuts themselves short right now. They are really missing out.

I love Tom Waits. I love the surprise I get with every album. I love the vividness his music has added to my life. So I'm going to post the lyrics to a couple poems/songs he wrote:

Watch Her Dissapear
Last night I dreamed that I was dreaming of you
And from a window across the lawn I watched you undress
Wearing your sunset of purple tightly woven around your hair
That rose in strangled ebony curls
Moving in a yellow bedroom light
The air is wet with sound
The faraway yelping of a wounded dog
And the ground is drinking a slow faucet leak
Your house is so soft and fading as it soaks the black summer heat
A light goes on and the door opens
And a yellow cat runs out on the stream of hall light and into the yard
A wooden cherry scent is faintly breathing the air
I hear your champagne laugh
You wear two lavender orchids
One in your hair and one on your hip
A string of yellow carnival lights comes on with the dusk
Circling the lake with a slowly dipping halo
And I hear a banjo tango
And you dance into the shadow of a black poplar tree
And I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you as you disappeared

Nirvana
Not much chance, completely cut loose from purpose,
he was a young man riding a bus through North Carolina on the way to somewhere.
And it began to snow.
And the bus stopped at a little cafe in the hills and the passengers entered.
And he sat at the counter with the others, and he ordered, the food arrived.
And the meal was particularly good.
And the coffee.
The waitress was unlike the women he had known.
She was unaffected, and there was a natural humor which came from her.
And the fry cook said crazy things.
And the dishwasher in back laughed a good clean pleasant laugh.
And the young man watched the snow through the window.
And he wanted to stay in that cafe forever.
The curious feeling swam through him that everything was beautiful there.
And it would always stay beautiful there.
And then the bus driver told the passengers that it was time to board.
And the young man thought: "I'll just stay here, I'll just stay here."
And then he rose and he followed the others into the bus.
He found his seat and looked at the cafe through the window.
And then the bus moved off, down a curve, downward, out of the hills.
And the young man looked straight forward.
And he heard the other passengers speaking of other things,
or they were reading or trying to sleep.
And they hadn't noticed the magic.
And the young man put his head to one side,
closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep.
There was nothing else to do,
just to listen to the sound of the engine,
and the sound of the tires
in the snow

Pheasant Painting

2008-06-16T02:51:00.000-04:00

The Pheasant is finished!

An Evening with Jackson

2008-05-26T00:32:00.003-04:00

Today was just what I needed. I woke up and finished preparing some canvases which I will use in the morning. I then went into Richmond and met Jackson and my father for lunch at Kuba Kubas. Jackson and I planned on meeting later to watch La Vie En Rose, and after an afternoon of reading Order of the Phoenix, he came over at 8 and we did. It was a great movie about the French singer Edith Piaf. We both enjoyed it and due to my not having dinner we went to the village.

I don't drink so I was confused when the guy asked for my I.D. and then stamped my hand. We sat down and just started talking first about pornography and how it detaches one from life and how important it is to re-engage with life. I ordered a tuna salad sandwich and the conversation moved into taking about engaging with life through art. I told him that I've learned so much lately about how to paint and draw but have reached a dead end where I can't improve without re-engaging emotionally, something I took for granted as a child and seemed to be the most natural part of making art. I told him how Karol told me my assignment this summer was to keep a sketch book and figure out what I want to say as an artist. I said "I have all the tools I just don't know what to do with them" and at some point after ranting about how much I needed that engagement with life, that passion I said "I just need to feel...." and couldn't think of what to say next. Jackson said "in my mind you just hit on the problem of our generation right there with all the television, and pornography, and other the other forms of disengagement." I told him I knew I liked to paint faces and that I knew what kind of shapes I liked but nothing more. Oh and that I do not care so much for painting landscapes (not to say I do not love them), to which Jackson replied "isn't the female figure a landscape." I agreed and we told him how when your really close to someone you loose a sense of scale because you forget everything else or everything else exist through the immediacy of their being. There is no measure of things just them. I told him how I've looked across Meg's shoulder blades and thought they might as well have been mountains.

On our way out of the Village Jackson asked me what I thought "good" was. It was a spiraling complex conversation. I began talking about it like motion or action or doing in which you can't place your finger on it because you can't create a conceptual model for something that exist in the act. It is not a static thing. I also thought that perhaps being something that we do it is a means of acting in the world not something you can step outside of yourself and look at. Jackson stated that nature was more insane than good or bad and I told him to the best of my ability that we are apart of nature and just because we do not recognize our morality in nature externally doesn't mean that what exist internally is any less apart of it, or any less authentic. He took these ideas and elaborated further until we finally started talking about the transcendent other. He said that to him the good wasn't a process like what I had been describing so much as a discovery. It was something that you experienced and knew when you did that it had been there all along, that you had met before. This great other reminded me of Hegel's dialectic which I told him about and he seemed to like. I soon realized that Jackson was pretty damn smart. We discussed the necessity of the other in order to grow.

He soon left and I began to think about it further. I used to write and talk about this other. These moments that whispered always instead of now. I used to search for them in art, just a little, and somethings they would find there way in without my knowing. I realized wow, Jackson has helped lead me to a piece of the problem I had brought up over dinner. This search for the transcendent. This seeing deeper into the content of the world around me was what was lacking. Jackson made me realize that I can't find content that inspires me not because of the content itself but because of my failure to look at it correctly. The otherness, the good, the transcendent, whatever you want to call it exist in the act of doing as I had proposed and as a discovery as Jackson had proposed. I need to look at the world the right way, and the world would surprise me by showing it to me. Like any healthy relationship it needed to work both ways. And so I know now that this failure to find content that interest me artistically isn't a problem with the world. It's a problem with who I am in relation to the world, and when I start working on that, when I start remembering how to open up, I can open myself up more to the other, the good, and my art will be the child of these experiences.

I'm so passionate and fired up right now. I'm so thankful for Jackson's company. I can't wait to paint in the morning. I will try to see with open eyes, and by this I mean my entire being.

So the Summer Begins

2008-05-22T13:17:00.003-04:00

The last week of school was pretty fantastic. I hung out a lot with Meg, Jackie, and Sean. We watched movies and went to an abandoned highway which Meg says she'll like a horror story about. I also had a good time eating Vietnamise food with Erin and Sam one evening. Packing was a hassel but Meg, Jackie, and Sean were a huge help. I also spent a night at Meg's house which was a lot of fun. Oh yeah and I can't forget about how Meg got a flat on 84 and pulled off exit 44. She called pretty terrified so I managed to borrow Greg's car (thanks Greg) and Doug rode along with me (thanks Doug). We met up with her at a shaws parking lot which was "well lit and away from the shady apartment building where people kept looking" at her. We waited until her mom and the AAA guy showed up. It was an exciting last week. I miss it.

I'm home now. Trent and my mom picked me up and the car ride was a lot of fun. Got to richmond at about 6 in the morning. Trent and I had great conversations on the way down about all sorts of stuff from ghost to affirmitive action. We ate at Denny's as the son came up. It was a good time.

At the moment I'm at my grandparents and have been spending most my time out here although I have hung out with Fran and couple times and saw Jessica yesterday. It always takes time for me to ease back into seeing people. I have to get settled first. I have no studio space and no real bedroom. I'm debating whether I want to stay in Richmond where I have the city, or Chester where I have some comfort. I can't imagine the frustration I'll be experiencing when choosing a place to live next year. I look forward to Sean coming home and I think I'm going to try and meet up with my friend Jackson soon. I could give Shane a call too. It's really hard to remember how to be social when your used to spending so much time alone. I look back at times when I was constantly hanging out with a mass of people and try to remember what we talked about or how it all even worked. It's harder now with Jobs, fonflicting schedules, and other obligations. Anyways I hope I get settled soon. The only thing I really feel at peace doing is reading Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix (yeah I'm way behind) for hours on end. Infact I think I'll go do that now.

Oh and a quick addition. I may teach little kids some art lessons as a job out where my aunt Dorthy lives. Hopefully it will work out.

Dear Mrs. I mean Ms. Groves

2008-04-29T20:26:00.004-04:00

The quiet times between outbursts are always the most real, and also the ones that go unnoticed and largely unremembered. The way someone's face falls when the laughing stops, the pregnency or comfortablness of a silcence.

I love you, I hope you don't mind my quoting you, I just re-read this entry, and thought wow she's really on to something. I want to paint those forgotten moments. Seems appropriate for me with all my silence and light which Matt calls collected dust. Collected dust and Silence and the way someone's face falls when the laughing stops. We need more time to think poetrically, and creatively together.

Going Home Soon. . ./Bob Dylan

2008-04-29T19:43:00.003-04:00

I've been listening to a lot of Dylan lately and just remembered this poem. It's not a song, just something he wrote as a part of the liner notes on The Times They are a' Changin' (one of my all time favorite albums). I remembered this poem because it resonates with the part of me that isn't feeling too great about going home. Richmond seems to be getting better, but with the help of a friend (Meghan) I have come to the realization that I can no longer be a slave to my past. So I dread opening old wounds and being trapped in the same old place. I need to make some sort of peace between who I am and where I came from just to get by and be a healthier, happier, person. Anyways it made me think of this so I posted it. Hope you like it.

The town I was born in holds no memories
but for the honkin' foghorns
the rainy mistthe rocky cliffs
I have carried no feelings
up past the Lake Superior hills
the town I grew up in is the one
that has left me with my legacy visions
it was not a rich town
my parents were not rich
it was not a poor town
an' my parents were not poor
it was a dyin' town
(it was a dyin' town)
a train line cuts the ground
showin' where the fathers an' mothers
of me an' my friends had picked
up an' moved from
north Hibbingt' south Hibbing.
old north Hibbing . . .deserted
already dead
with its old stone courthouse
decayin' in the wind
long abandoned
windows crashed out
the breath of its broken walls
being smothered in clingin' moss
the old school
where my mother went to
rottin' shiverin' but still livin'
standin' cold an' lonesome
arms cut off
with even the moon bypassin' its jagged body
pretendin' not t' see
an' givin' it its final dignity
dogs howled over the graveyard
where even the markin' stones were dead
an' there was no sound except for the wind
blowin' through the high grass
an' the bricks that fell back
t' the dirt from a slight stab
of the breeze . . . it was as though
the rains of wartime had
left the land bombed-out an' shattered

south Hibbingis where everybody came t' start their
town again. but the winds of the
north came followin' an' grew fierce
ran' the years went by
but I was young
an' so I ran
an' kept runnin' . . .

I am still runnin' I guess
but my road has seen many changes
for I've served my time as a refugee
in mental terms an' in physical terms
an' many a fear has vanished
an' many an attitude has fallen
an' many a dream has faded
an' I know I shall meet the snowy North
again-but with changed eyes nex' time 'round
t' walk lazily down its streets
an' linger by the edge of town
find old friends if they're still around
talk t' the old people
an' the young people
runnin' yes . . .
but stoppin' for a while
embracin' what I left
an' lovin' it-for I learned by now
never t' expect
what it cannot give me

Fred Wessel

2008-04-27T15:58:00.004-04:00

Fred Wessel

Fred is my egg tempera teacher. Before studying with him, when I first looked at his work my inherited cynicism caused a reluctance to enjoy it. I thought to myself "this is too pretty, too sweet." It did not last long and I soon recognized how inauthentic my response was to his work. Now I really appreciate his work because it is unapologetically decorative and precious but not in the contrived way in which I have seen decorative arts in shows which try to elevate decorative art to the level of fine art or obliterate the distinction all together. Work with this intention seems to have always bored me. The decorative nature of his work with it's gold leaf and patterns has an emotional impact not because of any allusions to traditional 14th century Italian painting process, but because of the same type of aesthetic wholesomeness that existed in that 14th century work. It is beautiful because it is beautiful and I think the fact that the figures in his work are not idealized gives it a human touch that transcends any contrived materialistic interpretation of the work. In other words the gold is there aesthetically not conceptually (at least that's the way I see it), and what really gets to me is that it is around figures which are not idealized. They look like someone you may know and all that gold leaf, and fine articulate technique simply creates a sort of transcendence to there appearance. They are portrayed through affection and this affection which is holy in the work of the Italian old masters, is just as holy around the women in his work. I love that it gives the real life every day human being a transcendence which grounds religious beauty to human experience outside of a religious context. If you look closely the imperfection and exposed red clay bole in the gold leaf furthers this marriage of holiness and imperfect life. Now I'm not saying that I love all his work, I do like a great deal of it, I'm just trying to say that I love the humanity it captures. And if you ever meet Fred you'd know that he possesses all the wholesomeness and humanity in his work. He's a great guy and I've really enjoyed his class

Junior Review

2008-04-22T15:58:00.003-04:00

I had my junior review yesterday. It passed, and I knew I'd pass which is besides the point. What made it worthwhile is the insights my professors had. They recognized my facility and said that it is time to start discussing content. I don't know much about the content I want to work with. I have been painting to get good at painting for a long time now and content has just been beginning to subtly come in through the process of creating the work. They praised my newer work over the Sicily paintings for the same reason my Sicily paintings were praised over my work before it. It shows a consistent improvement and direction I've sort of unconsciously been heading in over the past year. I was told that my philosophy studies were showing because my paintings seemed to be not just about what I was observing but the act of observing itself. They said this was due to the stillness of my work. Karol asked me to keep a sketch book this summer and to come back next semester showing her my studies and from there we would start to discover and pick out the themes and ideas which I can build into the content of my work. I am very excited. I can't wait for next semester!

WARNING: THIS IS JUST VENTING

2008-04-21T17:20:00.006-04:00

Part of me is sorry I ever wrote that artist statement. Part of me is sorry I ever presented my paper at the honors colloquium. All the talk I do about the necessity of authentic human relationships and collaborative construction of values and meaning seems hypocritical of me. The truth is I've met to many hostile people in my life and I am so weary of being asked to be understanding of them. Some people just hate me for no reason, and my life would be easier if they weren't in it. So part of me wants to say fuck it. Let them choke on their own shit, I'm never going back, I'm leaving your sinking ships, and I hope you all drown.

I wish I could have put all that more constructively, but as you can imagine I'm not in the greatest mood.

Artist Statement

2008-04-21T01:54:00.003-04:00

The following is an artist statement I'm going to use for my junior review in the morning. I think it does a fairly good job of stating my intentions as an artist in a very general sense. I'd like to hear what others think about art, artist statements, dialogue in art, or anything related to this at all so please, comments are welcome.

Miguel Carter-Fisher
Artist Statement

As an artist I am interested in engaging in an emotional dialogue with my audience. I want a dialogue because a work of art can serve as the object of an experience for all those who view it, and in that I hope that my work acts as a medium between various individuals. These varying experiencing individuals I will try to face with openness, humility, respect, and criticism. I want to engage them in a dialogue because I want people to find their own voice as well as my own through the experience of my work and I want to create tension. And this dialogue is emotional because too often dialogues are limited to intellectualism, which is important, but nothing without an emotional impact. To think deeply is to feel deeply and to feel deeply is to think deeply and I want to inspire passion for life and a greater awareness of being in others, as great artist have inspired in me. I want to inspire a pluralism of experience, and to move away from the narcissistic fragmented individualism which neglects the profound ways in which we relate to art, life, and particularly each other.

Undergraduate Research and Creativity Colloquium, April 17, 2008

2008-04-20T00:48:00.004-04:00

The following is my research paper on the Czech Dissidents from my course on human rights in Prague and Krakow. It was recently presented at the Honors Colloquium which was a lot of fun. Dan and James presented with me and excerpts from Willy's paper on Potocka's phenomenology as a basis for dissidence was read (Willy couldn't present because he is in Germany). My paper is on the dissidents themselves and Dan's paper, "Coping and Resisting: A Meliorist Ethic" which I'll ask permission to post was on the Czech citizens themselves and how they lived with the Communist regime during normalization. James read his poem "Concentration" which was about Auschwitz and Birkenau. He always says "I write bad poetry" but I don't think he does. We all found his poem to be deeply moving. The whole presentation took a lie of it's own during the questions and answers session in which we all discussed and reflected upon the important of authentic human face to face contact is in order to move forward towards a healthier government, culture, community, and world. I hope you enjoy this paper. (Jenna did a sketch of Dan and I while we were presenting. Check it out)

Miguel Carter-Fisher

Human Rights in E Europe: PHI 470 and 471

Dr. Moen and Dr. Aliotta

An Ontology Informing and Informed by Dissidence

This paper will address the various attitudes of some of the Czech dissidents on the nature of truth (through solitude or through discourse), the dialectic nature between the two, and the relationship between morality and politics. It will also address Benda’s conception of an alternative polis in which culture exist outside of the formal structure of a society through the establishment of new structures, as well as another dialectic between formal government and culture. In conclusion I want to address the necessity of human rights in avoiding the alienation of labor in relation to maintaining dialectic with one’s culture, and finally the necessity of a social as well as individual consciousness.

To begin let’s take a look at Vaclav Havel and his conception of “life in truth.” For Havel an individual either lived in truth through public dialogue or lived in lie. Under communism living a lie meant participating in the “ritualistic ideological automatism of the system. (Tucker 116)” Aviezer Tucker, author of the book “The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel” writes that according to Havel:

. . . life in a lie cannot eliminate the essential human potentiality for life in truth. Self-alienation is possible only because a repressed potentiality for authentic life in truth is always present. People can always start living in truth; in the Communist context, this could be achieved by ceasing to utter ritualistic ideological nonsense and restoring meanings to words. Life in truth reveals reality and presents a moral example for others to follow, thereby demolishing the alienation at the foundation of the Communist system. (Tucker 116-117)

Please keep this alienation under the communist system in mind because we will come back to it towards the end of this paper. For Havel living in truth is not a utilitarian act of doing what is likely to lead to favorable results but to act in a way that is essentially human. Tucker quotes Havel, “By the way, the representatives of power invariably come to terms with those who live within the truth by persistently ascribing utilitarian motivations to them – a lust for power or fame or wealth – and thus they try, at least, to implicate them in their own world, the world of general demoralization. (117)” To further illuminate Havel’s conception of truth the following is a quote from Havel’s essay “Politics and conscience.”

One such fundamental experience, that which I called 'anti-political politics', is possible and can be effective, even though by its very nature it cannot calculate its effect beforehand. That effect, to be sure, is of a wholly different nature from what the West considers political success. It is hidden, indirect, long term and hard to measure; often it exists only in the invisible realm of social consciousness, conscience and subconsciousness and it can be almost impossible to determine what value it assumed therein and to what extent, if any, it contributes to shaping social development. It is, however, becoming evident—and I think that is an experience of an essential and universal importance—that a single, seemingly powerless person who dares to cry out the word of truth and to stand behind it with all his person and all his life, ready to pay a high price, has, surprisingly, greater power, though formally disfranchised, than do thousands of anonymous voters. . . The warning voice of a single brave scientist, besieged somewhere in the provinces and terrorized by a goaded community, can be heard over continents and addresses the conscience of the mighty of this world more clearly than entire brigades of hired propagandists can, though speaking to themselves. It is becoming evident that wholly personal categories like good and evil still have their unambiguous content and, under certain circumstances, are capable of shaking the seemingly unshakeable power with all its army of soldiers, policemen and bureaucrats. It is becoming evident that politics by no means need remain the affair of professionals and that one simple electrician with his heart in the right place, honouring something that transcends him and free of fear, can influence the history of his nation.

Yes, 'anti-political politics' is possible. Politics 'from below'. Politics of man, not of the apparatus. Politics growing from the heart, not from a thesis. It is not an accident that this hopeful experience has to be lived just here, on this grim battlement. Under the 'rule of everydayness' we have to descend to the very bottom of a well before we can see the stars. (Havel, from the essay “Politics and conscience”)

So what we have in Havel is a dissident who feels that any individual can bring about positive social change through engaging their society. According to Tucker, in reference to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” Havel was one who felt the duty to “return to the cave” and tell their compatriots (116).

This feeling was not shared by another dissident named Rezek who felt that Havel had denied truth to individuals who had no social connections and denied dissidence outside of a social context. The either or of resisting the system and living in truth, or conforming to the system and living a lie, did not work for Rezek. He felt that some individuals avoided conflict but still lived in truth. If as Havel thinks, truth is only possible through dialogue between individuals, than it is impossible to live in truth outside of society. But if truth can come through internal dialogues, as Rezek believes, there is no necessity for a social context. For philosophers like Rezek truth is a private experience, an artistic like revelation (Tucker 118). To Rezek the experience of truth requires danger and conflict which can exist outside of a political context and must be maintained to live in truth. To Rezek, going back to the “Allegory of the Cave,” once out of the cave, one must struggle to stay out of it (Tucker 119).

Personally I prefer Havel’s conception of truth to Rezek’s due to its individualistic nature and uselessness on a social level. What good are the enlightened if they treat their enlightenment as a mystical experience which cannot be communicated or influential on others? This is not to say that his standpoint is without value. Internal dialogue is as important as external dialogue and the necessity of conflict is a factor in Rezek’s which I do not believe should be too easily overlooked. Truths do come out of the necessity to solve problems.

Perhaps Tucker is making a generalization of Rezek and Havel. If so, for the sake of philosophical discourse, let’s continue thinking of what has been written of them so far not as their entire beings, but as two abstract philosophical standpoints which will lay down the foundation for the rest of this paper.

I believe that these two standpoints must be synthesized to get at a truer sense of what life in truth is or at least how we can move towards it. Two examples of the synthesizing of these standpoints are the Dissident Martin Palous, and more indirectly Havel’s play “Largo Desolato” which I believe shows the necessity of the synthesis through the mutual failure of both.

Tucker states that “Patocka envisioned Carter 77, according to Palous, as an apolitical and pre-political moral act, much like Socrates apolitics, thoroughly typical of the spirit of the polis.” This idea of pre-political moral acts and the spirit of the polis I feel are very necessary conceptions. Usually moral acts come only as reactionary, but here we see the establishment outside of the system of a moral disposition. Palous agreed with “Rezek-like withdrawal from the social sphere, but only for the sake of returning to the public sphere, as Havel would advocate. (Tucker 120)” With this I believe two dialectic systems can be unified under the same reciprocal pattern. First we have the internal dialogue one carries on with himself, and then we have the synthesis of that dialogue carried out in another dialogue externally with others. In the same fashion the Dissidents had Charter 77 which establishes a pre-political morality than is then engaged dialectically with the already existing political/moral standards. What I am now going to argue is not just the common pattern of these two forms of dialogue but also their necessity upon one another through Havel’s “Largo Desolato.”

In “Largo Desolato” the main character Leopold lives a trapped life of repetition in his flat. It is clear that he is a dissident of some kind or another who is paranoid due to his expectations of intelligence agents coming to his door. The whole play takes place the repetitious actions of Leopold and the dialogue runs in circles. Leopold is encouraged to reengage with the outside world. His friend Bertram confronts Leopold:

What happened to your perspective on things? To your humour? Your industry and persistence? The pointedness of your observations? Your irony and self-irony? Your capacity for enthusiasm, for emotional involvement, for commitment, even for sacrifice? I fear for you, Leopold- I fear for us! We need you! You have no idea how we need you, we need you the way you used to be! So I am asking you to swear that you won’t give up – Don’t weaken! Keep at it! Get a grip on yourself! Pull yourself together! Straighten up! (Havel, “Largo Desolato”)

Here in this passage the nature of Leopold’s relationship to Bertram and others is stated to be directly correlated to Leopold’s self. The line “we need you the way you used to be” packs a punch. In theory through pulling himself together (internal dialogue) Leopold should be able satisfy the external demands and reengage with the external world. But this is not the case. Later on in the play Leopold identifies his current state by quoting this passage word for word. His internal self is dependent upon the perception of others as those others are dependent upon the nature of his internal self. It is completely reciprocal and completely circular. It is a static relationship. Bertram’s statement only tells Leopold what he is not and Leopold from here does not gather what he is. His self-consciousness is empty and so are his actions. The only way it could be broken is if Leopold changes his self-consciousness and then changes his external action, or changes his external action which will ultimately change his self-consciousness. In either case novelty is necessary and the only chance he gets for novelty is robbed from him when the intelligence agents do not punish him for his actions when he refuses to obey them. External and internal dialogue, both Rezek and Havel’s paths to truth, are completely woven together. Self preservation and preservation of one’s community are inseparable.

In Disturbing the Peace Havel further illustrates the interdependency of the self and the external world.

I too feel somewhat here there is a basic tension of which the present global crisis has grown. At the same time, I’m persuaded that this conflict – and the increasingly hypertrophic impersonal power itself – is directly related to the spiritual condition of modern civilization. This condition is characterized by loss: the loss of metaphysical certainties, of an experience of transcendental, of any superpersonal moral authority, and of any kind of higher horizon. It is strange but ultimately quite logical: as soon as man began considering himself the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it. (Havel, 10-11)

This passage illustrates some very important conflicts of our time. We have the loss of a God like authority and must turn to ourselves and to one another for our morality, culture, governments, and our own personal sense of identity. On top of that this identity which we have as an opposing standpoint in the dialectic we have with the word is reduced to a static relationship, something to own, something to measure and conquer, and our own identities grow stiff. We need discovery, wonder, and difference from the world so that we in a Hegelian sense can reflect back onto ourselves through the other and become self-conscious. By becoming the “measure of all things,” and replacing our conceptual models for real life experience, which is easily done through irresponsible media and an increasingly alienated culture, we are turning the world into a grand mirror in which we try to carry on a conversation with our own reflections. Ultimately it reflects a necessity to question whether one is reflection back upon one's self through an other in which a dialogue takes place, or whether one is merely confirming one's self through an already existing model of the other.

A side point to this is various experiences I had discussing the E. U. While talking to a Polish student in Krakow she explained to me the benefits it brought through common legislation, economic interdependency and how it promotes peace, and open borders for travel. I thought wow this is really fantastic. Then while talking to a teacher of mine who teaches in various cities in Italy every summer, and is extremely Italian himself how he felt. He agreed that all the benefits were fantastic but said that it was the homogeneity which upset him in certain instances. One instance he brought up is that a certain group of cheese makers in Italy he knew could no longer grow there cheese in caves after joining the E.U. They had to meet the common standard of growing there cheese with stainless steel equipment. Now I have no proof of this incident beyond what I was told but let’s get around that by looking at it if not as a fact, then as a hypothetical. If something like this were to happen than that is a small blow to that individual culture. In light of the benefits I’d say well no big deal, regulations on food are necessary although perhaps a warning would be a better way to handle it than outlawing it, but the problem is that in our world there are many small blows which create ultimately one big one. I am not blaming this on the E.U. I am merely stating that it is a serious threat we must take into consideration during globalization. For every loss of one’s craft and culture there is a loss in humanity. Part of the human dimension to the world is lost. I am sensitive to this matter because I am a painter (in the traditional sense) and for and in a profession such as my own, you recognize the grand desert which has been created in our modern times, and feel the weight of humanity lost. When I went to see the contemporary art in the Museum of Modern Art in Prague it was the sameness of it which left me depressed. No true dialectic was involved, there was no other to reflect back onto my own self-consciousness, only the same stale inhuman walls I had seen all my life in the States. It was an empty nothing, and I having nothing, felt nothing that is, except anger and desperation.

The reason I bring this all up is because it ties directly back into the Dissidents and the Socratic Method which lies at the very foundation of the western philosophical tradition. Tucker states that the Czech dissidents recaptured something very basic about the relationship between politics and philosophy. The relationship he states must have been obvious to the Greeks in the era of Socrates and Plato. He continues that “when philosophers became academics, they had to give up some of their perfection or authenticity. In countries where they became state employees, their search for political truth became compromised by their dependence on state funds, and they became less critical of the state. Communism forced philosophers out of the confines of the academy. They had to find manual jobs, but in return they gained the kind of liberty that only the generation of Socrates had been able to exercise. (Tucker 122)” I take this to mean that philosophers like the examples of art, Leopold in Largo Desolato, and world cultures in general, are loosing their use of the other whether it is their own other in which they reflect back upon themselves, or as the other as a means to reflection. In other words, they aren't carrying a dialectic with the world. Here we come back around to Rezek and his stance that the experience of truth requires danger and conflict which can exist outside of a political context and must be maintained to live in truth.

This maintenance of the truth, staying out of the cave looking at the sun, is Socratic in that it reflects how Socrates positioned himself outside of the Athenian citizens he questioned, although Socrates was not completely out of the cave he was separated from those who were completely in the gave by the way in which he tried to find his way out. Now what is significant which Rezek leaves out is the fact that the way out of the cave for Plato and Socrates was through dialogue. This is where Havel’s conception of the path to truth comes in and in a way they are synthesized through Plato’s dialogues.

One quote which has always stood out to me ever since I began philosophy is”

Perhaps someone may say, “Aren’t you ashamed, Socrates, to have engaged in the sort of occupation that has now put you at risk of death?” I, however, would be right to reply to him, “You’re not thinking straight, sir, if you think that a man who’s any use at all should give any opposing weight to the risk of living or dying, instead of looking to this alone whenever he does anything: whether his actions are just or unjust, the deeds of a good or bad man. (Plato, 54)

This clarifies Socrates stance, and in Plato’s writings he did die for his occupation. Patocka’s students all had to rewrite Plato’s “Crito” in which they had to choose between suffering an unjust death as Socrates did, or accepting the exile offered to Socrates. This debate is reflected strongly in Rezek and Havel’s disagreement in which Rezek feels that some individuals avoided conflict but still lived in truth as stated earlier. The conflict also existed between Havel and Milan Kendura in which Havel was willing to accept imprisonment, and Kendura who was critical of the moral and political effectiveness of intellectuals under totalitarianism preferred liberty in exile (Tucker 123). Personally I believe there is a necessity for both. I see the necessity to confront the totalitarian regime, but at the same time that confrontation does not have to be made alone but can be done through the aid of foreign powers. The either or attitude fails to realize the interdependency and influence various nations have on each other politically, and economically in an increasingly global community. I will not judge the either or attitude of the dissidents so harshly seeing as I’m sure it reflected a time in which globalization was not as prominent, and exile was probably a greater distance away given the scale of the eastern block. Then again if you look back on Czech history the formation of Czechoslovakia was based heavily on getting the allies to support the cause. I believe that a productive exile can carry out a similar purpose.

From here I want to go into Benda's Parallel Polis. The dissident Benda's solution was not to attack the totalitarian regime, or to compromise with them, but to ignore them. He wanted to create alternative and parallel social, political, and economic institutions (Tucker, 127). One example of an alternative parallel institution was Samizdat music and literature which was more interesting and influential than the cultural products of official communism. Samizdat helped preserve Czechoslovakian culture as well as make global cultural contributions. Tucker states that contributions were made by "Hrabal, Klima, Kohout, Sidon, Havel, and others in literature; Bondy in poetry, Lapatka in literary criticism; and Patocka and his students in philosophy" who had, "published much, if not all, of their world-class contributions in samizdat. (Tucker, 128)"

Benda also suggested the creation of parallel educational institutions which would be an alternative to the incompetent state system, parallel economic institutions that would provide dissidents with material security and independence from the state through contributions from the west. Because of the need for western support Benda also pushed for alternative foreign policy. This aid could be used for financial assistance, educational instruction through visits to Western scholars, some of which gave lectures in private homes, but never amounted to a University. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty also played a role as an alternative source for broadcasted information. Benda also wanted the establishment of connections to other dissidents throughout the Soviet bloc. The Charter 77 dissidents were successful in establishing contacts in Poland who they met along mountain tops on the Polish-Czechoslovakian border (129).

This relationship to Poland is important because it illustrates the ultimate reality of Benda's alternative polis. The Polish and Hungarian Communist leadership responded to popular discontent through relaxing their oppression of the society which created some space for dissidence and for movements like Solidarity in Poland. In Czechoslovakia the leadership protected itself by intensifying political power. Charter 77 dissidents faced "the full blunt of state oppression." The space in which Benda wanted his parallel polis did not exist in Czechoslovakia and totalitarian oppression isolated the dissidents from the rest of the population. Out of this came an emphasis on authenticity within the very limited community of the dissidents (Tucker, 129).

This emphasis on authenticity really struck me. Tucker states that "dissidents characterized their independence as personal and communal authenticity, free expression of one's self and free association. (129)" I now want to take this back to the the previous paragraphs in which I talked about the necessity of an other to reflect on, or in other words a Socrates like figure. I believe that this is directly tied into the Dissidents emphasis on authenticity. Under totalitarianism one's ability to express one's voice is not taken for granted. If you are going to speak, speak authentically. Too often do we take our freedom of speech for granted in the United States. This is not to say that our media is a perfect system in which all we have to do is raise our voice and the masses will hear. Infact it is very difficult for marginalized and critical voices to be heard against the flood of mainstream media. And because of this we are stuck in a very bad place. Our freedom of speech, like other human rights, are not as easily attainable as we imagine to be, and on top of that we do not culturaly put enough emphasis on utilizing those rights. An example of this to my own mind is the rejection of education and the persuit of material gain expressed in mainstream African American entertainment put up against the previous generations of African Americans who struggled just to be able to go to school fought to be allowed to read. It is tragic and I think the emphasis on authenticity is something we ought to adopt from the Czech dissidents.

But instead we have a culture that cringes far too easily. We avoid the spiritual, the sentimental, and any other value which is not readily attached to material gain. Infact our kitsch is often our avoidence of kitsch. We have a value system in which perfection is somehow attainable and somewhere above the human condition. Everything is overproduced and polished in some form or another. The following is a passage in which I think Tucker illustrates this point:

Some Western commentators (I recall a review of Letters to Olga in the New York Review of Books) just did not understad that publishing Havel's complaints about his hemorrhoids was an authentic antithesis to the Communists' hero-worshiping descriptions of their imprisoned martyrs who never had any human weaknesses and therefore lacked any credibility. (Tucker, 131)

I believe he illustrates this point because it shows that the West already exist in a position which largely does not empathize or understand the necessity for authenticity such as Havel's experience stated above. Our media portrayals of celebrities and politicians is one in which they are expected to express a certain level of perfection, and tearing them down to the level of average human is something people take great pleasure in through a whole variety of telivision shows. Implicit in it is the idea that with wealth and fame you are something greater than average, you are an ideal. So how is our media in this regard, much better than the one the Czechs went up against under the totalitarian regime?

Another issue of our culture which relates to this is pornography and when I use this word I do not mean what is commonly thought of but a much broader category. First of all I believe that the difference between pornography and erotica is that erotica is grounded in something authentic, something in the human condition. It is not a perversion of it. Secondly, sex is not the only thing in our culture that gets distorted and separated from the human condition in this way. Violence is also widely accepted and detached from authenticity by the media (news, film, telivision, etc.) desynthesizing us. So when I say pornography what I mean is on the whole our cultures unauthentic culture. We would benefit a great deal for an emphasis on authenticity.

Havel did not think that an independent society such as Benda's parallel polis was possible in Czechoslovkia, although there were forms of alternative culture and literature. This was not seen as a negative to Havel who saw in the impossibility of two independent societies in Czechoslovakia the possibility of the actions taken by dissidents to have more influcence on the general population (Tucker 130). I think this ties back in Havel's belief that living in truth is through public dialogue. Because there could not be a complete separation dialogue as opposed to alienation was possible. The idea of a parallel polis, or any form of seperatism falls much under Rezek's notion of living in truth. Ultimately I think this goes to show that it is a gradiated scale between alienation and conformity, and a balance between the two is where dialogue is possible. Culturally we have to be careful not to confuse the recognition of difference with segregation and this brings us into a broader argument between pluralism and relativism. If the parallel polis had been successful I wonder what good it could have been to the masses of Czechoslovakia. It would be relativistic, and alienate them from the people, perhaps even create an elitism amongst them. Going back to Tuckers analogy that Rezek's philosophical attitude was to stay out of the cave, and Havels was to return to bring more out into the sun, I want to argue that the conflict which Rezek said was so necessary to live in truth is not to struggle to stay in the light, but to struggle to do just what Havel argued for. To be put simply, to help others, is to help yourself. An example of this I am familiar with is in recovery programs such as AA in which one path that can be taken is to be the sponsor of another alcoholic. Another example of this is teaching in which by passing on knowledge to others and hearing what others have to say you yourself learn and grow more. This now I have it and I better do my best to keep it is a horribly prevelent attitude here in the United States. More and more people live in not just fragmented fenced in communities, but there own homes are fragmented and fence in from those within their communities. Know I know the world is not as safe as it was or atleast not as safe as it was percieved to be in 1950, but part of that problem is the means in which we try to rid it, which is through alienation. We live in a time in which people see each other and often think "I don't trust you because I don't know you and I don't want to get to know you because I can't trust you." On top of this we have political correctness which henders education, communication, and the possibility of dynamic and constructive relationships. Nothin can be done in a culture where people are too afraid to step on each others toes, and on top of that not be expected to work it out. Lets agree to disagree just doesn't cut it. Homogeneity must be let go of. It's time to be influenced and to be influential. I believe the first step to solving these problems is not just communication but communication that is as authentic as possible.

Leadership is also a very significant issue which ties into this. Benda states:

when the next crisis comes, the next moment of decision about the future of our nations, the good will of most of society (. . . this has so far been incredibly good and always brutally disappointed) will find a sufficiently clear and a sufficiently authoritative articulation . . .our political leadership must be on the same level of thinking as society. (Tucker, 133)

I think in recent years under the Bush administration many Americans are feeling the same way, if they did not feel this way already. How do you end up in a situation like the war in Iraq? I believe a large part of it has to do with alienation. The media alienated those who were against the war from the beginning, the Bush administration alienated the U.N., we alienated ourselves through going there with complete disregard for the culture and history of Iraq, and the media continues to alienate us through the use of tactics which further seperate us from the authentic truth of the situation. Lives are turned into numbers and violence is masked by charts and diagrams. So how do we even begin to have leadership which reflects us. Globally how do those without power maintain there human rights when those who do have power are so far removed. Just earlier today while driving down Albany ave. (which goes through an extremely depressed poor black neighborhood) a classmate of mine said "what the hell was that, I thought I was going to get muged" in a joking voice with a smile on his face. I was disgusted because I know that although that fear is very real, what really got to him because it gets to all of us is having to leave our safe circular campus and face the reality of those who are not nearly as privledged as ourselves. It is so difficult to even recognize them as a part of the world when I am thinking about the world of academics and art for that matter. Well our leaders so easily look past those who's human rights are trampled on by the same fault. In the world of making money as a top priority, how do you add the value of human life to the equation? It is easy and right for us to be so dissapointed as Benda expressed, but before we are too dissapointed in their overlooking us, we should also take into consideration whether we should be dissapointed in ourselves by overlooking others. We have to stop evading authenticity.

While on the topic of alienation I would like to talk about the alienation of labor as well. In Alienated Labor Marx Marx criticizes the Political economy by talking about how it separates the worker from his work, turning into a "cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces." He continues that the increase in the value of things correlates to the decrease in the value of the human world (Marx, 1086). He also writes that in such a system the worker is "related to the product of his labor as to an alien object." He writes, "Political economy conceals the alienation in the nature of labor by ignoring the direct relationship between the worker (labor) and production. (Marx, 1087)" The relationship between worker and labor is one where the labor is externalized from the worker. Marx then goes into what constitutes this externalization:

First is the fact that labor is external to the laborer - that is, it is not part of his nature - and that the worker does not affirm himself in his work but denies himself, feels miserable and unhappy, develops no free physical and mental energy but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind. The worker, therefore feels at ease only outside work, and during work he is outside himself. (Marx, 1088)

This is a very important passage to me because it reflects the experience of many Czechs I imagine under totalitarianism. It is ironic really that the communist regime would go against whatt I perceive to be a fundamental part of Marxism. When many of the Dissidents as well as other Czech citizens were not allowed to be published, or not allowed to work where they chose, or not allowed to go to certain schools, wasn't this a form of alienating labor. It is not explicitly alienation in the sense that Marx expresses but related into it indrectly. How can the laborer internalize and find himself through his labor if he/she has to do labor that is against his/her will? This illuminates what I believe to be a very serious issue concerning human rights. How can you efficiently make sure that laborers identify with their work across the vast number of occupations and life styles? I think this is a basic human right in that it is a basic human right not to be a slave, although becoming a slave to labor in this sense is slavery not in the traditional sense, but class, economic, and in the case of the dissidents, to a degree slavery for one's views. With this I conclude that freedom of expression and the avoidance of slavery are completely bound.

Another issue which plays into this is how little control a worker may have over how static or fleeting his occupation is. Oursourcing of jobs as well as an inability to move freely both hold the worker in a bind. On top of this is the way in which we value jobs. It is socially frowned upon to be a garbage collector, plumber, or in some cases a teacher even though these are apart of a large category of occupations which are absolutely necessary to the well being of society. This is because our value systems are based on material value, or in other words how much does it pay, and we equate money with respect and dignity. This problem can be remedied by a reconstruction of our values, and an economic hierarchy that is fair to the weight and responsibility of the workers.

I think this issue reflects a larger issue than just capitalism or communism. Havel expresses this well when asked if he has a more concrete notion of a better social system:

I've already admitted to having one. The traditional political debate between the right and the left revolves around the ownership of the means of production, to put it in Marxist terms: that is, around the question of whether business enterprises should be privately run or made public property. Frankly, I don't see taht that is the main problem. I would put it this way: The most important thing is that man should be the measure of all structures, including economic structures, and not that man be made to measure for those structures. The most important thing is not to lose sight of personal relationships . . . (Havel, 13)

Ultimately the Charter 77 Dissidents did not completely overthrow the Communist party, but when the Soviet bloc collapsed they negotiated the transfer of power (Tucker, 133). What is interesting to me about this is that it shows the significance of their work as dissidents as something that did not have an obvious an immediate impact, but served a purpose when the time came. I think it expresses the necessity of a moral foundation before politics. When the Velvet Revolution happend it was not destruction and chaos because individuals like the dissidents were working to think of new systems and new values despite how futile things may have seemed. Havel ssaid "I don't think catastrophes are essential for all improvement in human thought, nor do I think they automatically produce such changes. (Havel, 18)" Too often people react to events with no foundation or center behind them. I think it shows the significance of hypothetical thought and, the ability to imagine change, as the dissidents put it "living in truth" even if it doesn't seem to make a difference at the time. Society will always need social critics to engage it in an ongoing dialectic and this role is a key role to the role of philosophers. I hope it is never lost.

Bibliography

"Vaclav Havel - Living in Truth". 03/08 .

Havel, Vaclav. Disturbing The Peace. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Tucker, Aviezer. The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2000.

Marx, Karl. "Alienated Labor." Classics of Moral and Political Theory. Hacket Publishing Company, Inc. Fourth Edition. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Michael L. Morgan, 2005. 1086-1092.

Platol. "Apology." Classics of Moral and Political Theory. Hacket Publishing Company, Inc. Fourth Edition. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Michael L. Morgan, 2005. 46-63.

In addition to covering some of the main points of this paper I tied it back into the title, one which this paper originally did not have, which involves the word Ontology. The study of Ontology is the question "what kind of beings are we?" I ended by saying that we are relational beings capable of constructing our own moralities outside of static ideologies through our own experience and authentic relationships to one another.

Date

2008-04-19T03:15:00.002-04:00

Today has been so great. It's been "toasty" out as Meg would put it. I spent most of the day talking to friends and laying out on the lawn. The senior illustration show was good and after that Meghan and I went on a fantastic date tonight. I wore the one good shirt I have and she wore a warm white dress with a cool dark jacket.We took a cab from a very friendly Indian cab driver who barely spoke a word of English to West Hartford Center. There we wandered around trying to find a restaurant to go to. We stumbled across Arugulas where James, a senior painting major, who was a waiter there waved to me. Meg and I decided to give the place a try. It was packed so we had to wait a long time so we wandered down to Barns and Noble where I started to read a passage out loud from Best Erotica of 2007, well I did until I realized an older woman and her little boy were on the same isle as us. On our way back to the restaurant I accidentally punched a girl in the butt while flailing my arms around telling Meg a story. It was pretty funny. We kept moving along like it didn't happen. When we finally did eat we had delicious Mediterranean food. James was a great waiter. Conversation was great too. Meg was smiling so much. She had a joy on her face I hadn't seen for a long time. It was a great night.
We both really needed it.

Music

2008-03-29T12:43:00.002-04:00

It isn't enough to listen to music. It's much better if it fuses with everything around you. Then it becomes the soundtrack to that moment in your life and your living in it. That's much more meaningful and wonderful than just listening to music.

2008-03-20T23:49:00.000-04:00

So predictable it's embarassing

Kuspit, Kandinsky, and Schelling: The Spiritual in Art

2008-03-13T11:04:00.004-04:00

The following is a paper I recently wrote for my 19th century philosophy class in which I use the philosophy of Schelling and Donald Kuspit (a contemporary philosopher/art critic) to try and find some guidance in a struggle against materialism. Hope you enjoy:

Miguel Carter-Fisher

19^th Century

denOuden

Kuspit, Kandinsky, and Schelling: The Spiritual in Art

Donald Kuspit, a contemporary American art critic and philosopher and the 19^th century German philosopher, both face, what I will argue, is a common struggle in the arts. In Schelling’s time he set himself in opposition to the ideology of neoclassicism which was thought to be an aesthetic embodiment of rationalism and enlightenment ideology. It was the art of the French revolution and based its cannons of beauty and values in antiquity. In his work “Concerning the Relation of Plastic Arts To Nature” he questioned the commonly assumed relationship between nature and art and re-establishes the dynamic in a way which goes beyond the mere appearance of nature towards it’s spiritual essence, and life energy. Kuspit’s struggle is not against neoclassicism but the art of the latter half of the 20^th century, which includes pop art through postmodernism. He does this through a lecture given at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2003, in which he is reconsidering the Abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky’s book On the Spiritual in Art. On the Spiritual in Art is a book in which Kandinsky tries to capture the spiritual in art against an increasingly industrialized and modernized world. Through a reconsideration of Kandinsky’s work Kuspit evaluates our current situation here at the dawn of the 21^st century. So in this paper there will be three time periods discussed. There will be the rise of romanticism (19th century), the beginning of modernism (late 19th early 20th), and our current time which I consider the bleak wasteland left over after postmodernism ran its course (21st century). What brings these three times together is what Schelling, Kandinsky, and Kuspit have in common, and that is that they are all opposed to materialism in their own way and see salvation from that materialism in the spiritual.

Donald Kuspit brings into question our modern conception of art not by talking about how the spiritual plays into the creation of art, but by exposing the result of it's absence. He begins by addressing why we ought to bother reconsidering Kandinsky's book. Kuspit states that despite the fact that Kandinsky's book which was published 1912 we ought to be reconsidered is not for historical purposes, or because it was a text that was hugely influential on 20th century art, but because it address the problem of how to generate and articulate what Kandinsky called "the all-important spark of inner life," or as he also called it " . . . of innercessity." Kuspit feels that addressing this spark of inner life is something we in the present must address as well and this binds us to Kandinsky's struggle. The spark of inner life to Kandinsky was the inner core of spiritual experience. Kuspit recognizes that in Kandinsky's time "what was meant by spiritual was self evident to his audience." This is not the case anymore. Kandinsky and his audience both had there conceptions of the spiritual "anchored in religious tradition" but today there is no religious tradition to sustain a common conception of the spiritual. Kuspit states that "when Kandinsky described how he came to the idea of the spiritual in art - when he said he realized that 'the sensations of color on the palette' could be 'spiritual experiences,' and that's right out of Hegel." (Kuspit)

The spark of inner life could be experienced in churches according to Kandinsky and he wanted to capture this religious experience, which was common whether you were in a Russian Orthodox or a Catholic Church as he said. He wanted to merge artistic and religious experience. Kuspit states that "the picture is a kind of sacred space for Kandinsky, and Kandinsky thought that abstract painting induced it, as well, if only because in entering an abstract painting one turned away from 'the external aspect of phenomena,' as he said, toward what he called "feelings of a finer nature." For Kandinsky work had to be seen through "spiritual eyes" which were eyes that could intuit innernecessity and did not get caught on the surface, seeing only the physical material or outer necessity. He spoke of his tendency toward the hidden, the concealed, and what he meant by it was his ability to see the spiritual concealed in the material, or in other words, the emotional reality behind the material appearances of the world. Kandinsky wrote "I want people to see finally what lies behind my painting."

This duel nature of inner and outer necessity in Kandinsky is by no means original to him and in my opinion is a manifestation of mind-body dualism. From here we will go back in time to Schelling.

To begin, I feel Schelling offers a great interpretation of the visual arts:

For plastic art, according to the most ancient definition, is wordless poetry. Without doubt, the author of this statement meant to imply that, like those spiritual thoughts, it should express ideas whose source is the soul, not, however, by means of speech, but, like silent nature, by configuration, by form, by sensuous works which are independent of it. Plastic art, therefore, manifestly occupies the position of an active link between the soul and nature, and can only be comprehended in the living centre between the two of them." (Schelling, 324)

This definition applies well in past times but seems dated in our far more secular age. The link between the soul and nature which the plastic arts occupy brings into question the commonly held principle that art should imitate nature. Schelling feels that this principle is too vague (Schelling, 325), and many artist who try to imitate the whole of nature fail to "achieve a conception of what nature's essence is. (Schelling 324)" Schelling states that "there are almost as many notions of it [nature] as there are different modes of living. (Schelling, 325)" I think it is important to keep in mind Schelling's era and remember that he is revolting against neoclassicism. There is no explicit evidence of this but I think that it is a sound contextualization of Schelling's standpoint. It is also important to recognize that the values of neoclassicism were so institutionalized that not only one's formal education in the academy was influence by it but architecture and sculpture which served political purposes (such as Washington DC and many capitals across the United States) all adhered to neoclassical principles. This is not explicit in Schelling because the problem is addressed through criticism of antiquity itself which neoclassicism claimed to get it's values and cannons of beauty from. He states that:

To them, nature was not merely a dumb, but an absolutely dead image, to which even inwardly no living word was innate: an empty scaffolding of forms of which an equally empty image was to be transferred to the canvas or hewn in stone. This was the right theory for those ancient, crude peoples who, since they saw nothing divine in nature, brought forth idols out of it; while to the perceptive Hellenes, who everywhere felt traces of a vitality operative essence, true gods emerged from nature. (Schelling, 325)

The last line about the perceptive Hellenes counters could be used as a counter argument to my statement that he is going against neoclassicism, except for the fact that he could be making an exception for the art of the Hellenistic period, and on the whole his views on art, as you will see in the conclusion of this paper don't support the neoclassical appropriation of Hellenistic art.

He continues that artist do not simply imitate the perfection of nature, which is a common notion in the idealized forms of art derived from classicism, but the imperfections of nature as well. Then he asks "But what is each thing's perfection? Nothing else than the creative life within it, its power to exist." He then continues, "If we do not look at things in terms of their inner essence, but only in terms of their empty, abstracted form, they in their turn say nothing to our inner being; we must set our own minds, our own spirits in operation before they will answer us."

I believe there is a direct parallel between Kandinsky's spark of inner life and Schelling's inner essence, as well as Kandinsky's spiritual eyes and Schelling's statement at the conclusion of the previous paragraph. I believe that it is safe to say they are talking about the same category of experience one has while looking at art. I will illustrate Schelling's entire system eventually but before doing so I want to first address some of the issues addressed by Kuspit which answers we can find guidance towards in Schelling's system.

Kuspit feels that another reason for reconsidering Kandinsky is the necessity of re-affirming the spiritual in art and awakening from "the nightmare of the materialistic attitude in art as well as society." He states that materialism has become a plague in both. To Kandinsky impressionism to materialism's climactic statement in art, but as Kuspit says, he did not have to see Pop art (Kandinsky). I think this is interesting because one may assume that Kandinsky would identify with impressionism, appearing as a derivative and sharing a common appreciation for liberated color. What I think this shows is that Kandinsky may see the representation of material reality as materialism itself. I think that this is a failure and generalization on his part to recognize the true relationship between inner essence and material reality. Schelling in his own time, does not make this mistake as as stated above this will all come to light when Schelling's system is illustrated.

The following passage has stuck with me because it calls out the failure of our contemporary culture in a very important way:

The inability of Pop art to convey inner life, which is a consequence of its materialistic disbelief in interiority, and especially spirituality, which is the deepest interiority, indicates that Pop art's irony is at best nominally critical. Irony in fact mocks belief, even as it spices up materialism, making it seem less banal, that is, populist, thus giving Pop art the look of deviance characteristic of avant-garde art. I dwell on irony because it is opposed to spirituality, not to say incommensurate with it, and also its supposedly more knowing alternative—spiritual people are supposed to be naïve—and because irony has become the ruling desideratum of contemporary art, if you're not ironical, you're not in, apparently redeeming its materialism. This itself is ironical, for contemporary materialistic society and its media have discovered the advantage of being ironical about themselves, namely, it spares them the serious trouble of having to change. This suggests that irony has become a form of frivolity. It is no longer the revolutionary debunking understanding it once claimed to be, for example, in Jasper Johns' American flag paintings, but an expression of frustration, of stalemate, I would say. (Kuspit)

In this passage I think that Kuspit clearly illustrates the necessity of sincerity in art if it is ever to go beyond materialism. On top of this there is also the issue of being a consumer culture. Since the corporate sponsorship of art, without corporate legitimation of art's significance, without commercial value, art in our culture has no historical or cultural value as well. Business materialism treats art as a commodity before anything else, and this is normal enough except for the fact that it has become a work of art's primary identity and its market place value is its primary value. Kuspit states that "It seems more and more foolish and farcical to speak of a work of art's internal necessity when it seems designed to cater to, even ingratiate itself with external necessity."

Marketing materialism has given art more visibility and prestige in our contemporary culture than when it had in the past when it served religion and aristocracy, and this may be seen as a positive but:

. . . business's enthusiastic endorsement of avant-garde art's professed autonomy is business's covert way of asserting its own autonomy, that is, its belief that, like art, it is answerable and responsible only to itself. By supporting art, business appropriates art's supposedly intrinsic value and claims to advanced consciousness. Ours is a business culture not a religious culture, and it is impossible to find spiritual significance in what Warhol called business art . . . Corporate headquarters are not churches, even though their decoration with works of art are attempts to give them spiritual significance. (Kuspit)

Another conflict we must also take into account is the fact that materialism does not stop at simply the value of art in our culture and the institutions which endorse art, but also the fact that material itself has become so emphasized that there is no possibility of looking at any inner spiritual essence. Kuspit feels that the art critic Clement Greenberg's theory of modernist painting is the final intellectual stage of the despiritualization of art, in which it is reduced to nothing but material medium. Kuspit states that "Such materialistic reductionism, involving the complete objectification of art—it is a case of what Whitehead called 'misplaced concreteness'—is evident in Greenberg's assertion that 'the great masters of the past achieved their art by virtue of combinations of pigment whose real effectiveness was abstract,' and their greatness is not owed to the spirituality with which they conceived the things they illustrated so much as it is to the success with which they ennobled raw matter to the point where it could function as art." It is amazing how the simple distinction of whether the inherent feeling of a painting is in the medium, or whether it is in the inner essence which the medium captures, ultimately leads to dramatically different ideas about not only the process in which art is made, but of its worth to us as viewers. If we believe that it is all just a arrangement of materials it has no deeper impact on us than that. If we believe that a work of art penetrates down further into the spiritual, we believe that it is penetrating something greater, something which includes us, and in Schelling flows throughout all of nature. Sadly this notion of art as being the arrangement of material has set a limitation to how far people believe they can push art, and to what degree they can experience it (this too is addressed by Schelling).

The following passage is a question which is posed by Kuspit in light of all this, which I believe Schelling offers the answer to:

Question, are there works of art that are made today that do not walk on the crutches of avant-garde habit, that do not have the tone of avant-garde convention, that one can return to again and again as a resource of inner life? How many works of art made today require a second glance? There are no doubt works that seem emotionally powerful, and even deep, but rarely does one find a work in which the emotion and the medium seem one and the same. (Kuspit)

Instead of the term material Schelling uses the word form and in Schelling form is the exterior of an object. Lets begin by returning to art as an imitation of nature. Schelling states that if an artist were to simply copy nature he would get nothing more than a mask, but not works of art. (This is still an issue people have with much contemporary art where facility at rendering takes the place of quality in people's judgments.) For Schelling the purpose is not to simply capture the form of nature but its inner essence. He states that "the artist ought indeed to emulate this spirit of nature, which is at work in the core of things and in whose speech form and shape are merely symbols, and only insofar as he has apprehended it in living imitation has he himself created something true." He continues that the so-called idealization of nature seems to spring up from a manner of reasoning in which it is not truth, beauty, and goodness, but the opposite of these that that are real. He continues that if the real were the opposite of truth than the artist would not have to idealize it but destroy it in order to create something good and beautiful. It took a moment for me to come to grasp what Schelling means by this but I interpret it as saying that the real is what exist in nature, and truth is the idealized form, than we would have to destroy and replace with our idealized forms what exist in the world to get what is true. This seems to me to reflect modernist architecture in which theories of maximum efficiency dominate over aesthetics and the necessity for a city to grow organically. He continues by stating "how could anything except truth be real, and what is beauty if it is not full and complete existence? Accordingly, what higher purpose could art have either than to depict that which exist in nature and in fact? Or how could it set itself the task of surpassing so-called real nature, since it would be bound always to lag behind the latter? For does it impart sensually real life to its works? (Schelling. 332)" In short I take Schelling to be saying that art which is idealized nature, is not above nature.

He continues that works of art appear endowed with life only on the surface but in nature life penetrates deeper and is entirely blended with substance (Schelling, 333). In other words nature in nature form and essence are the same. An expression I've heard that captures this is function before form. So respond to Kuspit's statement that rarely emotion and medium rarely are one in the same, in nature the two are always the same. The following further illustrates this point and is one of the main factors in Schelling's aesthetics:

In any case, if form were necessarily restrictive to essence it would exist independently of it. But if it exists with and through essence, how could the latter feel restricted by that which it creates itself? Violence might certainly be done to essence by form which was imposed upon it, but never by that which flows out of itself. It is bound rather to rest satisfied in the latter and feel its existence to be autonomous and self enclosed. Definiteness of form in nature is never a negation but always an affirmation. Generally, of course, you think of a body's shape as a restriction which it undergoes; if, however, you were to turn your attention to creative energy, it would strike you as the bounds which this latter sets itself and within which it appears as a truly meaningful force. (Schelling, 334)

Because form and essence are in nature in harmony, in art this must be duplicated. He states that beauty is distributed evenly throughout nature and art cannot begin at as deep a level as nature so it must capture a part of nature in which beauty is manifested and evolved. Schelling states that art demands a certain fullness of beauty, not a single note, or even a chord, but the whole choral melody of beauty, and he sees the human body as the highest manifestation of this (Schelling 335-336). I initially disagreed. I thought well this is subjective and other individuals such as Kandinsky see the inner essence, or the spiritual as being at it's greatest manifestation when freed from representational form (not to be confused liberated from in it's totality which would reduce Kandinsky to the materialism he is at odds with). This brought to my attention the fact that the spiritual in Kandinsky is not rooted in nature as strictly as it is in Schelling. Kandinsky paints universals, as opposed to instances of form. I do not see them as in any opposition but as seeking the spiritual essence of life in varying degrees. Then again Kandinsky was opposed to the impressionist (calling them materialistic when I see at least Money, and a few of the others as capturing the harmony between form and essence which Schelling describes in an incredibly powerful and moving way) and I seriously doubt Schelling, if he was alive to see Kandinsky's work, would appreciate it. It is a privileged position I have to unite them together under the same goal of finding the spiritual in art. Out of this comes a new understanding of nature and spirituality which takes precedence over abstraction and representation bringing them together under the same principle.

Schelling's view of the human figure as the most highly evolved manifestation of natural beauty seems also to be anthropocentric, but if taken down a notch it makes a lot of sense. We humans are what is most intelligible to one another. We know each other more than any other animal. So the human figure is a great starting place in learning to express the inner essence of nature because it is the most clearly expressive. I know this from experience as an artist and recognize that the figure can be a doorway into understanding gesture, form, grace, struggle, and beauty in itself, which can then taken in as universals, which can then be applied to other objects. This is not a rule by any means, but generally true enough to where I think it is a good argument for the necessity of drawing the human figure in one's education of art. And the way it lends itself to those universals even directly connects it with abstraction. So again, Schelling and Kandinsky are not so far apart.

The way in which Schelling feels beauty is achieved is stated in the following:

The outward face or basis of all beauty is beauty of form. But since form cannot exist without essence, the presence of character as well can be seen or felt wherever there is form. hence, characteristic beauty is beauty in its roots, from which alone beauty as fruit can subsequently come into being; essence certainly outgrows form, but even so the characteristic still remains the ever effective fundament of the beautiful.

The most noble man of knowledge . . . likens the characteristic in its relation to beauty to the skeleton in relation to the living figure. (Schelling, 338)

So it is through form that we get character and character leads us to beauty. My way of understanding this is to think to myself, beauty runs through all of nature as he said, and so the characteristic of natures individual forms is an extension of that beauty, but since we experience the plastic arts as form, this characteristic is our foundation to which we connect with the universal that is beauty. Ultimately the character of form is the bridge between man and beauty.

There is a lot more to be said about Schelling's aesthetics, but for this purpose of this paper I believe that this is a good stopping point.

Kuspit concludes his lecture with the following:

I am suggesting that the future for a spiritual art looks bleak—although there are spiritual artists working today, I believe, truly spiritual work. But then again, as Kandinsky and Marc demonstrate, only a few artists are needed to affirm its possibility, and it was never meant for more than the happy few, despite Kandinsky's utopian, not to say delusional, belief that it would lead everybody out of the materialistic wilderness. The question today is where are the few artists who are ready and willing to reaffirm the spiritual, and, more crucially, who can convince us that their art does so—that it is a beacon of transcendence in dark materialistic times. How is an artist to keep alive the idea of transcendence in a world in which it has become trivial, passé, incomprehensible? Kandinsky had a messianic complex, behind which lurked a martyr complex—and this is quite demonstrable—but neither is any guarantee of transcendence today. It is a difficult task to think of transcendence, let alone assume the reality of mystical experience, in a world that seems to have usurped and manipulated our subjectivity and whose deterministic hold on our lives seems more complete than ever. It is a world in which it is hard to gain a critical distance from the determinisms which shape our existence—to take a critical stand against the external forces that seem to determine even our inner lives. Every critical analysis of some determinism, personal or social—every effort to transcend it by analyzing its structure and effect, for such analysis affords transcendence when it is made out of internal necessity not simply out of intellectual curiosity, as Spinoza argued—quickly becomes another deterministic theory. I think it is more difficult than ever to be a spiritual artist, but in my opinion, it is the only kind of heroic artist that makes sense in threatening modern times, as Kandinsky makes clear. (Kuspit)

I believe that this lengthy passage is most important and illustrates just where we are today. Schelling states that "a different inspiration falls to the lot of different epochs" and "to try to draw sparks from burnt-out ashes and kindle from them a universal blaze is a vain endeavor. (356)" This is what the art world is now, burnt-out ashes, and Kuspit which the above passage clearly illustrates, I believe would agree. So where can we go from here?

Although I do not, and few do if any, understand Schelling enough to say I am fully confident or even full agree with him, I have gathered enough to think that his relationship between inner essence and the universal beauty and spirit in nature, and it's relationship to form is a good place to start. We must rid ourselves of our categories which limit our interpretation of objects to not cannons of beauty but cannons of purpose which are equally as harming. The expression function before form comes to mind and by recognizing the function that comes before the common forms throughout nature we can re-connect with what Schelling is talking about. There are common features throughout all of humanity and all of nature and by recognizing these universals we are recognizing a piece of the larger essence of nature and if this can be recognized and captured in art we are making great progress in capturing and expressing the essence of life itself.

In conclusion, on a personal note, my father always told me when I make a mark to always be expressive, and descriptive. This I believe is the full embodiment of what Schelling is talking about. Things are beautiful and aesthetically what they are out of their inner necessity to survive. Beauty is not arbitrary. Aesthetics come out of manifestations and evolutions of nature. So when my father gave me this advice I took it as something essential to making good drawings, now I realize it is essential to understanding the whole of natures construction. So earlier today when I was in the studio drawing the model I tried to keep Schelling in mind. I thought of the beauty and grace of the mark to not just be the form of her arm but the essence of her being. At that moment my heart stirred with weight and my insides felt like they were burning in the most enjoyable way. I realize that this feeling is the inspiration which has always been there alongside me pushing me forward. It has always been the sensitivity which allows me to grow as an artist, before by accident, and now with the help of Schelling, Kuspit, and Kandinsky, by my will. An art teacher of mine years ago told me I was dipping little by little into the universal, and now I know what he means.

Bibliography:

Reconsidering the Spiritual in Art, Donald Kuspit". Blackbird Archive: an online journal of literature and arts. .

Schelling. "Concerning the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature." The True Voice of Feeling. Patheon Books.

New York: 1953. 323-364.

I'd like to add that in addition to this I have realized that the relationship between the object which I try to capture in my art and myself as an artist are a Hegelian one through the art. The object participates in a dialectic with me and the result of that dialectic is the work of art. If done well the form is not just as Schelling states the essence of that object with its form but my essence as well. (The object can be an internal object as well. We are a pluralism of selves so the dialectic can be between the I and the me, the I and it's actions reflecting the me, so to be put simply, we exist often as our own objects and in art can be our own object to engage in a dialectic with.) So when I make a mark, I make a marriage, between myself and my object. We are both bound together. If I paint your portrait when you look at it, you are not simply looking at who you are to me, but in turn who I am to you. This fits well with an earlier construction I made with Pierce's semiotics in which a work of art is a sign for both the object and the subject, and that relationship then becoming through its presentation to an audience an object, which serves as a sign between the artist and the audience. Relationships grow. We are in a fractal of dialectics.

One last addition is the idea of compassion which was discussed earlier in class when covering Schopenhauer. He argues that we are all together in a cosmic struggle and that our rational constructs are an illusion we must get around, and on the other side of that illusion is boundless compassion where we suffer together. I wouldn't limit this to just suffering, and I would say that the bounds of compassion is debatable, but I do believe that this compassion is synonymous with the kind of dialectic stated earlier because it is essential to capturing form and essence. Andrew Wyeth was wise when he stated that he can only paint as far as he can feel.

2008-03-10T19:11:00.002-04:00

I feel so heavy. Life is so inherently tragic. You have to say goodbye so many times. I've realized that I know care for my friends at Hartford as much as the people I grew up with back home. It is a good feeling but also a source of dread.

"the killer in me is the killer in you"

Beautiful Faces

2008-03-07T01:05:00.007-05:00

Rembrandt
Carravaggio
Botticelli
Leonardo da Vinci

2008-03-06T21:10:00.003-05:00

I'm so burnt out. I feel inadequate and lost. What am I doing? Where am I going? I need affirmation so often. Is it a sign of immaturity? are others more confident? why do I get so down? How come other people don't get down so easily? It's been a rough week. I need to pull it together. I feel like being proud of myself again. I just feel so weak.

2008-03-06T21:07:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I feel like I'd rather be a vegetarian, and other times I think to myself "I eat meat because the realization that something is dying in order to sustain me helps me cope with my own mortality." I'm nothing above it. I kill and will die. What bothers me is the needless cruelty, and the needless death.

Donald Kuspit

2008-03-01T20:24:00.003-05:00

This is a link to a lecture he gave at Virginia Commonwealth University. I stumbled across the lecture while looking him up for a paper I'm writing in one of my philosophy classes. It was quite a coincidence that it was the same lecture my dad had been too and told me about.
http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v2n1/gallery/kuspit_d/reconsidering_text.htm

2008-02-29T04:39:00.002-05:00

I'm always amazed when I stop and look back at my life how much has happened. I think back on many of my friends and think about how much younger we used to be. It blows me away how much has gone by. I wish I could hold on to it all. My life has been great.

2008-02-27T01:03:00.002-05:00

I swear, painting is so damn hard. Seems like the more I learn, the more I realize just how damn hard it is. I just spent all evening and half the night painting a self portrait. It was rough. I am n ot pleased with the results, but I know I learned at least a little bit of somethin'. This summer I want to paint every day. Anyone out there who is interested in being painted or want to hire me to do a painting for them let me know. I think I'll use the goldfarb money to rent out a studio

Why I'm Interested in Light

2008-02-22T10:19:00.004-05:00

I am interested in light because I am interested in existence. It is lets us see places in the universe further away, and longer ago than we can conceive in our immediate experience. It also illuminates our most mundane objects when it shines through a window, or inspires awe when it passes over the landscape. It travels across such vast distances and yet is a tool capable of manipulation to better express our own human condition. Those who can see light like many more can hear a beautiful piece of music, whether it is small folk band, a jazz quartet, or a symphony, have lives which are truly enriched. It is everywhere we look and because of this we forget that it even exists. When people look at my art I want them to remember that it exists. I want them to know that sunlight which travels approximately 92,955,820.5 miles can have the character and simplicity of a simple highlight on the tip of one's nose. The universe is beautiful orchestration of light, and it is not this way because it was created for us, seeing as it precedes our existence, but because we came into existence in the same universe and exist in relation and harmony to it. Light is apart of us and apart of everything outside of us. When we look at it we see relationships, and all these relationships express the orders of being, and bridge the gap between the vast impersonal heavens, and the simple pleasures and pains of day to day life.

2008-02-17T17:04:00.004-05:00

The 19th Century German Idealist we are reading in glass, along with other elements of the Romantic period such as a presentation on the founding of field theory by one of the physics faculty, and a film on Mesmer, have left me inspired and reflecting on my own experiences. The following is what I jotted down after class in which we were asked to relate the material in class back to our own fields and interest:

While painting I have come to forget red, violet, green, orange, and so on. The deeper I get into color, the more I come to experience light, the further these distinctions are from my mind. Now when I paint I see pushing and pulling, approaching and receding, warmth and coolness and even now these words like color are just categories of experience when what I really come to experience is light in all my known interpretations of its meaning. The categories were tools needed to get this far but they have to be left behind. They are too general, too limiting, and too artificial to take into account what I really see which is a complex rythm and harmony dividing on the surface of everything I see. There are no walls, no hard edges between blue and violet. It is all one giant harmony. To capture it on canvas is to capture a small piece of life.

If you do not believe me than truly look at a Rothko. "Its just a red rectangle and a violet rectangle" you may say. Well damn your words. What the hell is red? What the hell is violet? They are tools and concepts used to categorize a phenomenon, and it is not the phenomenon. It is blinding you from what exist in the pure state of experience. It is a harmony of light, a harmony that is played out every time you open your eyes. Do you know what a compliment is? For example blue and orange at opposing ends of the color wheel? Well look at the sun setting orange light on the surface of white snow and you shall see blue shadows. Compliments is just a word used to categorize the natural phenomena of light. It sings to our eyes because it is out of nature, and we are out of nature and are built to experience and adapt to nature. We did not make harmony, harmony made us. We did not make beauty, we only named it.

Andrew Wyeth - "In finding this one object, I find a world. I think a great painting is a painting that funnels itself in and then funnels out. I enter a very focused way and then I go through it and way beyond it."

I Won Goldfarb

2008-02-15T03:18:00.006-05:00

I just thought I'd share that this girl named Jessica Rosario and I won the Goldfarb exhibition. Last year my painting didn't even get accepted and although I have improved a lot since then I didn't want to get my hopes up. I barely considered that I might win, tried not to think about it, and so it was a very very very pleasant surprise.

Here is a Link: http://www.hartford.edu/daily/news.asp?id=3948

A Brief Dialogue That Hit On So Many Problems One Miserable Thanksgiving Evening

2008-02-09T23:19:00.000-05:00

This is one of my worst memories, but I feel a necessity to share it because it hits on some important issues.

Insecure Male -What is you?
Me -Black, German, and Irish
Insecure Male -Irish?! Thats weird
Me -.....
Insecure Male -So you play both sides of the fence?
Me -What?
Insecure Male -I know that if I had some of that Irish blood in me man I'd have all these white girls too.
Me -.....
Insecure Male -So you don't be playin the fence? You don't be cheatin' on girls?
Me -No. I have a girlfriend and I'm loyal to her
Insecure Male -Man let's get out of here, fuck this nigga man, he's an embarrassment to the male race.

I want to paint my Papa

2008-02-01T11:01:00.000-05:00

My uncle Pete asked me to paint what I (putting heavy emphasis on I) thought of as the holy spirit. My uncle Pete is my Papas son and they are both Baptist Preachers although my Papa recently retired. It's funny how they keep up with current events and stay in touch with the world in a way that does not make their religious conviction upsetting or alienating to me. I am not religious but I can feel the strength of their presence and am uplifted by it. It is the humility and kindness. I thought long and hard about what I could paint that would satisfy my Uncle Pete's request and my own feelings.

Let me begin by saying that I recently laid in bed crying because all I have left of her is a few memories. I wanted to remember so much more and it was so painful, but one of those memories is her love, and my love for her, and I think to myself what better a memory could you give your grandchild than love. It took a few months for me to accept her death when I was little till finally one day I broke down hollarin' in my mom's arms. My Papa came in asking "What's wrong with him?" I was expecting to be told "suck it up." I was expecting another attempt at hardening me as the men in my family had done to me a little, but very much so to my mother. I didn't care though, "let Papa criticize me, I don't care, I miss Granny." Now let's keep in mind that this was the mind of a child. I didn't know what emasculation was but it was what I expected even if death had rendered me in a weak state. So my mom with a great understanding in her voice looked up at my Papa and said "He misses Granny." Then I looked up at Papa snot running down my nose, my cheeks drenched, and he looked down towards his feet, and continued walking down the hall.

One day afterschool I heard gospel music playing when I walked in the front door. I set my bookbag down and went about my usual business of making a sandwitch with bolongna and american cheese when I heard my Papa crying so hard he was shouting in pain. It was their aniversary.

After that it seemed like the ice had melted in the family. In sixth grade I would ride the bus to my Papas after school and talk with my Uncle Rod and him. Soon my Papa and I were becoming buddies. We'd joke around
"How ya doin' Guelly?"
"I'm doin' pretty good Papa"
"Well you doin' good but pretty?"
He'd often tell me little jokes and talk in riddles and rhymes. "You gotta get with it Guelly, you gotta be sharp." We'd also watch old westerns and re-runs of Kung Fu. It was funny to think I had ever been afraid of him.

One day my Papa took loaf of white bread and steped out onto the back porch. I watched him through the screen window. He started throwing out bits of bed on the ground and soon he was surrounded by dozens and dozens of pigeons. I thought how uncharacteristic. This man who talked of god and discipline showing compassion towards pigeons. Not only that but I could tell that he saw beauty and peace in them. These lowly street birds were beautiful and worth his attention. Upon recognizing the compassion in my Papa I was moved and felt very close to him. That moment is precious to me.

Just recently while reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kendura I came across a passage in which he said that the true test of our humanity is in how we treat animals. What can a pigeon offer us? Nothing. And yet we can still show kindness and appreciation and this selflessness is something special. It comes out of an awareness of nature and an empathy that comes out of being in a position where we can show compassion for it's own sake. I recently heard in my 19th century philosophy class that man is a place where nature becomes aware of itself. I can't remember what philosopher said this, but my Papa feeding those pigeons is an expression of this because it comes from a reflective state that may or may not be isolated to humans, but is most humane.

It is the moment I want to paint for my Uncle Pete; the moment that expresses what the holy spirit is to me. I have seen the holy spirit expressed as a white dove in numerous paintings, but for me the holy spirit is an old man, on his back porch, feeding a flock of dirty pigeons. I want to paint my Papa.

Crap

2008-01-29T19:16:00.002-05:00

my landscape painting is too pricey
the boot painting I submitted to Goldfarb is warped (tried to fix it but made it worse)
I read to far ahead in one class
I didn't read enough in another
I forgot the right brush for egg tempera
I can't find that bottle of india ink (thats been collecting dust for 3 years) now that I need it
I feel like crap

(that's right, I'm whining)

Monetary Value

2008-01-29T19:07:00.000-05:00

When my photo teacher from a year ago asked to purchase one of my paintings from the Sicily show I was thrilled. Thanks to her class I felt more confident in my voice as an artist than I ever had. I didn't just want to sell the painting, I wanted to sell it to her because I felt she appreciated where I was coming from. I didn't know how much to charge her. My father suggested 300 so I went with that. Tonight I asked her, seeing as much time has passed, if she was still interested. She said "too pricey." I didn't know what to say. I mean fuck, I don't know what the monetary value of my work is! I didn't mean to ask for too much! I don't even know what too much is! I hope I didn't come across as arrogant and I'm angry at myself for caring. I told her I'd lower the price and after an awkward pause she said to email her. I don't know if I'll bother selling it now. All I know is that I currently feel a bit awful.

Human Rights in Central Europe: Philosophy and Politics Winterterm Course

2008-01-26T22:24:00.000-05:00

The following is the journal I turned in to Professor Moen and Aliotta in my trip to Prague and Krakow. They are pretty much the intended audience although in parentheses I address anyone reading this online.

Journal:Part 1

January 3rd
Today was mostly me laying around, feeling like hell, longing for sleep which came after a long wait in the airport, a miserable cab ride, and a slow check in.

The later half of the day was better. Dave took some of us to old town. I thought it was gorgeous. Dinner was a lot of fun too. Due to procrastination there isn't much more about today for me to say.

January 4th
This day was a large improvement on the one before it although I still felt weak. I can't remember the early part of the day too well. The walk with Dr. Sedlakova was interesting. i was surprised that the architecture was derived from Gothic through Baroque and at first I did not know why. later it hit me that it was the graffiti and stores which seem to altar Pragues aesthetic. i thought to myself how could someone vandalize a building that so many people over centuries worked to maintain. This day was more aesthetically and emotionally stimulating than philosophically. i appreciated this because it gave my later thoughts a backdrop.

Later that night I began reading "A Brief History of Czechoslovakia" and the backdrop ground what I read in a way that made it more real than history classes back home. I found the history I learned to be somewhat of a relief. I could tell my ignorence of central and eastern Europe was beginning to thaw. I felt excited about being in Prague to a much further extent than the day before.

January 5th and a few more days after that
Today is the day that got the wheels turning, or atleast put the car in ignition. Dr. Aliotta's presentation on power was interesting. It went over concepts I hadn't thought much about. Habitual power got me thinking about the tyranny of the majority. I think of habit often as a failure of imagination. I remember the gut hostility I felt when confronted with views I could not comfortably cope with when I was younger like solipsism and atheism. I couldn't accept the idea that we are isolated to our experience alone because I was all to familiar with the shortcomings of relativism. I desperately wanted a absolute truth. Now I have learned to see things in less black and white terms but it was a painful process. I didn't want to give up an ideal that I could no longer justify. So how can you get a large body of people to imagine new perspectives, and break away from the habit of avoiding pain. This I believe can be a greater challenge when you are in a dominant group. To criticize oneself would be to criticize others and people now a days are too P.C., relativistic, and self absorbed. Not to mention the fact that it's painful to be in a short of ones ideal. I imagine it's easier to change yourself into thinking things are right when their not than to try and do something about it.

The realization for me was the discovery of pluralism which has aided me ethically, philosophically, and artistically. The discussion was very close in our second meeting to an argument I had with my grandfather. He voiced his intolerance of atheist, "they have no moral obligation without a higher power of some sort.....what do they swear on in court?" My father and I flipped out (which sucks because my grandfather is a brilliant man and this is the only time I have seriously opposed him. Throughout my life he has opened me up philosophically and without him I don't imagine I would have been in Prague taking this class or in philosophy in general). I tried to use an article by Sartre and a chapter in denOuden's book on Nietzsche where new moral constructs which are not based in religious doctrine are necessary. The argument was good preparation for class discussion. I found the tention between law and morality both interesting and troubling. I feel like our moral sense may always be ahead leaving some casualties of outdated law unavoidable. But the faster and more efficiently our formal constructs grow with our rights, the fewer casualties there have to be. The big revelation for me was that both absolutism and relativism reduce everything to power relationships. No truth excuses negative behavior and the absolute Truth brings dialogue, our formal government, culture and freedoms to a halt. Both extremes result in alienating masses of people and the possibility of dehumanizing them. I learned as Barnes stated, that like any good composition, in law both stability and novelty are necessary.

I'm not clear on which night we went to the jazz club but the necessity for both stability and novelty came up again. Lets just say the band was heavy on the stability and lacking in the novelty. In other words, boring.

From here on I will loose chronology because it is to time consuming. Prague castle and the cathedral were gorgous but the little pale colored, snow covered buildings along the winding roads really moved me. One picture I took begs to be painted. The use of design architectually in place of hard shadows (which if you have ever been to Italy you know are everywhere) was really cool. The class discussion continued to be better and better. I have a new found interest in phenomenology. In addition to the readings I was struck by Sokol and Kohak's different, but excellent solutions to educational issues. In Sokol, obligation as opposed to entitlement, and in Kohak the relationship between inspiration/emotional intellegence/intuition and founded philosophical stances. Both attitudes I think suit pluralism well. It is a good alternative to the Pc, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, over specialized, fragmented, and ultimately alienating experience of school I have been through.

I've also grown to enjoy discussing philosophy with my classmates. It is a huge help in trying to digest it all. I am perpetually overwhelmed. I often wonder how much professional philosophers have and have not read, and what was sacrificed to have time for it. I know one thing, I read much faster than I did a year ago. But on the topic of discussion, Dan Push and Willie are great for conversation. We discussed whether religious institutions/governing could co-exist with pluralism. I don't think so. At least not as long as religion dictates individuals morality. Dan H is great to talk to as well but its easier to maintain a heated discussion with the other two. I think its because Dan H is coming from a very different field than myself. (that's actually not it. It's just that Dan's process of philosophical discussion, as he described to me, is often first arguing and then working his way down to a collaborative inquiry.) For the most part, we all share a pretty similar attitude about many issues.

(I apologize to anyone reading the following paragraph who is unfamiliar with Pierce. It is probably not too easy to make sense of. And for those of you familiar with Pierce I fear it isn't much better written than his own. For this, I also apologize)
The discussion on Pragmatism has also made me come to a much greater appreciation of Peirce and his semiotics. All of this has affected my art by making me far more aware of the relationship between myself, my art, the content of my art, and the audience. There is a complex web of relationships but to be brief I recognize that a painting of an apple is a sign of that object and shaped by my perception (so it is also a sign of me) and the emotional reaction is an interpretant. It just hit me that the emotional reaction to any work is based in stages and habit as the interpretent in Peirce and changing habit has been a process of changing myself by reflecting on my work which reflects me. It is like this time i played guitar and sang but could not hit the key till my friend joined me. i couldn't sing to the guitar directly (seeing as I was concentrating on playing it) but could sing to her singing to the guitar. I don't know, loose example. Thinking of art as a sign rather than a definite thing allows room for a variety of interpretants. Here is a diagram:

(and there would be one like the one I drew in my notebook here if I was on a windows and could draw it on paint so I will try to explain it. The artist and his relationship to the artwork which when comeplete because an object of it's own as opposed to a sign of it's content creates an interpretent. The viewer and the artwork also have their own interpretent. So here we have two interpretations of the work.)

This way the work is a common experience while the painter and various viewers still hold on to their individual experience. The ultimate experience of a work is a marriage of the two. It is a pluralistic balance denied by the militant literalism of much contemporary art. Anyways this is all exciting to me.

I want to write more, but I better hand this to you.

Journal: Part 2

The past few days have been discomforting but all the more valuable experiences. This should come as little surprise to me. Every time I have traveled there has been discomfort. It is usually social but this time it is philosophical discomfort. I am going through some changes on levels that feel more foundational to the rest of my ideas.

The discomfort began with the gallery visits with Jana. I have no desire to go into it but the experience made two things clear to me. 1, The deconstruction of values in both craftsmanship and aesthetics have sadly crossed the Atlantic. 2, Even philosophers are suckered into the garbage of the late 20th century (only knowing how to experience things literally as opposed to the visual language of line, form, color, exc. and the emotions these produce) and philosophy or "philosophic" thought may be largely to blame. Sigh, see here I am overstating myself because I am angry. Let me rephrase that, " and half ass philosophy or poor philosophic thought which does not take into account all sorts of human experience may be largely to blame."

It was the first time I ever felt at odds with philosophy because the kind of thinking it required tries to verbalize and liberalize what can't be said in words and misses the mark. As Barnes has said many times in class, confusing our models for reality (a concept which has left an incredible impact on how I look at the world). I'd say a good philosopher must realize the limitations of even their own conceptual models and we all have to make models because they make us able to function in the world. One issue I always have is that I find a greater objectivity than what has been argued by non artist because they have not experienced the fundamental principles behind good art and can't even begin to come up with a concept that justifies it. They argue (postmodernism) that everyone experiences everything differently but lack the experience to know just how different and importantly how similar. That intimacy and knowledge comes with practicing the craft, and trusting the experience of others, as opposed to passing it all up to social class, gender, exc. To be put simply, a philosophical text on art, even ones that are really good, are not art, and can't replace that experience. So with that, I think good philosophy is philosophy where the individual who writes it isn't afraid to get his hands dirty working with the content and to spend a long time at it. One huge issue now in the way art is taught in the U.S. is that you have so many teachers who are not working artist. I think the same goes for any field that tries to comment on another. It is now another reason I appreciate this trip. Learning this material in a classroom simply would not cut it. But being in the Czech Republic is an experience which sparks the curiosity and brings the material so much closer. I worry about the increasingly specialized nature of jobs (and the specialized nature of the Czech University system) that the sensitive nature of one occupation, one field, one philosophical standpoint, one anything, commenting or brushing shoulders with another (as politics did with philosophy in our course) may fall victim increasingly to fragmentation and models confused with reality. These clean cut divisions in fields and schools of thought are artificial and in order to have a pluralistic world a much more honest, hands on understanding of others and their work must be made. It isn't enough to simply respond to the idea of something, you must respond to it as it exist in the world of experience.

In a sense my negative response to a lot of Czech art has done this to some degree for me. I have become increasingly aware of how others perceive art though my classmates. Their lack of understanding and doubtfulness of mine brings about a hostility in me. How can you make a generalization like that Miguel? I'm not making a generalization thats just generally how it works! I must say though that this too is an overstatement because my classmates are extremely intelligent individuals who listen to others when they speak. My hostility is more-so them from time to time reminding me of the masses of bullshit I've dealt with my whole life.
A huge part of this hostility comes from being told that my experience is obsolete. I'm sick of the emphasis on "relevance" in our culture. What the hell is that? As long as someone is moved by a work, it is relevant. The words "old fashioned" came up repeatedly and the evasion of it. It was as if everyone thought they knew all there was to know and experienced all there was to experience about pre-20th, no pre late 20th century art. AI argued to Willie and Dan that the 19th century had a great deal of variety. Just because a neoclassicist and a impressionist both painted a landscape doesn't mean that the handling of the paint, the gesture, the emotion, the philosophical standpoints, and even the content itself is similar. It's only the subject that's similar and that kind of knee jerk reaction is another example of seeing the model of something (a grassy field) as opposed to experiencing what it is.

I am so damn sick of sterile white walls full of shitty artwork (if you can even call it that) where there are no aesthetics just half-ass philosophies and justifications you have to read in order to get anything and often still nothing out of the work. It is ugly and it robs us of our humanity. Through the arts we have the ability to express and communicate a vast array of experiences which can't be done in words so why not use them! Thank god we've gone out and heard music and stuff despite the complacency of some of my classmates. You can't say everything there is to be said in words alone. In Unbearable Lightness of Being Sabina says that beauty is in refuge from the world and I agree with her.

This reminds me of an experience in Krakow at one of the churches/ At times I have wanted to crumble all world religions to the ground and reconstruct new and improved constructs in their place. The only thing that ever opposes this is the feeling I get in a place of religious worship. I have gotten it in some museums but never in the sterile contemporary galleries. Willie said that beauty cant be separated from the institution when it came to religion but I know different. I can do it to an extent but on a social level he may be right. I fear that when (if) the world ever reforms into the world I wish for, the world I'm willing to fight for, it will be too sterile for beauty. When my friends went in the church they thought of their Christian upbringings and felt oppression, where I saw dedication, craft, beauty, an aesthetic silence, a religious one that whispered in my ear liberation!

Perhaps I have found a new task. To preserve religious beauty and the weight of life in art, for the secular world. You may walk in a gallery and see bad art and think oh well thats disappointing and get on with life. i on the other hand think of the individuals I know including myself who want to put a little beauty, and humanity in the world, but can't because we aren't what the world thinks is relevant. There are so many artist in the world today and so I wonder why galleries look so much the same from Chelsea to Prague. It's that Sterile quality. The lack of humanity in it. It's a festering infection.

I know what the cause of this is. It is the media in the general sense. I will not go into great detail seeing as I have had a long conversation about it with Professor Moen and do not wish to over do it. I will try and put it as plainly and efficiently as I can. The root of my hostility towards feminism I've discovered comes out of the competitive nature of my field. When I see bad art being sold because it is "feminist" it makes me bitter for all of us sincere artist who have no crutch or gimmick to sell, only the hard work of trying to excel at our crafts. I say crutch or gimmick because the word feminist art as well as african-american art or gay and lesbian art or outsider art or anything else is that is supposedly anti-establishment is slapped on like a name brand to work that is the establishment. And who is to decide that this art is relevant art? It is all those other than the artist who profit from it. That is after-all how you climb up the latter. And this is done through the media which chooses what can be sensationalized, not what is worthwhile. The loudest statement is not always the best statement so the "relevance" of a work ultimately comes down to its profitability. Before this most other arguments are fronts. So what happens to the genuine feminist amongst the other hard working artist who rely upon their craft. Well as I stated the best feminist I know don't identify with the term, and we are all together at the lower levels of the art market.

And when i think about it, I know artist who are sincere and make great livings, and live happy lives. So what is it that I really want. It isn't money, and it is barely fame. What I want is history. When people look back on the time in which I live I want them to know that there were people who felt deeper, worked harder, and had things to say that were not sensational enough for the media, but worthwhile. I don't want my experience of the world to be tossed away as something obsolete and irrelevant. This is one reason I kind of hate art history. It over generalizes. I'm sure there are others like me. Others who feel that their life, their world, their voice, is deserving and fear that it will be drowned out by the endless passing of fads and novelties.

I am sure this applies to other crafts as well. I wonder to what extent it works this way in philosophy. I'm certain that in politics profit comes before quality, efficiency, and skill in far too many cases. So I have been thinking lately that this too is something to fight against. It is another area where there needs to be a new system.

My interview with Tomaz Vlcek who is in charge of the collection at the Museum of Modern Art left me with an odd feeling. he was very insightful but did not really give the kind of answers I was looking for. I think it was due to the lack of relevance in my questions. I learned that the Czechs were not as into expressionism as the Germans so finding work that directly relates to the politics of the times will be difficult. What I did learn though was that there isn't a common spirit of the time which Vlcek called an illusion. Instead there are parallels of thought. I brought up Hussrel and whether he was influential. He said that it was a broader influence due to Czech nationalism. The art world was also greatly affected by population loss during the German occupation and the immigration of many Czech artist, musicians, philosophers, and intellectuals during the Soviet occupation. There is also as we know through reading "A Cup of Coffee with My Interrogator" and "Largo Desolato" the means of controlling peoples ability to express themselves under the Communist regime. He stated that the new gallery system since the velvet revolution hasn't quite worked out all the kinks since they are now dependent upon private funding as opposed to everything being controlled by the state. After this interview and looking through the gallery I realized that I will have to radically change my approach to my paper. I have often said "I want my work to be the social change, but not necessarily about social change." I'm getting the humbling feeling that this viewpoint may not be so novel. In the Czech Republic, from the work I have seen, this seems to be the case. So my paper will have to be more on the institutional history of the arts more-so than the individual expression of the artist. I'm not sure how I feel about this. More research is necessary. Who knows, I may do something completely different. I still have a lot of reading left to do. It is overwhelming.

Auschwitz and Birkenau had an impact on me, as they would anyone who is open to the weight of such an experience. I have been asked about it many times and every time I have little to say. It feels strained and almost disrespectful because detached from the reality of it, in common conversation, it makes it unreal. You have to use your words delicately so as not to turn a tragedy into something entertaining. It gives me a bit of a headache when asked about it. It's the same headache I had while there. What I do feel more comfortable talking about with people is how can the world go on the way it has in the past 60 years after such a tragedy? How can the world know a tragedy this great and let it happen again? How can people sit back completely indifferent to the genocide that recently occurred in Darfur? Why is popular music so self absorbed with songs about "myself" instead of "the self" when so much is happening in the world? I know some of the answers because I am at times guilty of it myself. It's that hopelessness, that distance, following the path of least resistance, and the fact that our lives are so occupied with so much junk, who has the time to care? I want to do a massive painting of the gas chamber. A mural really. Figures in desperation, prayer, horror, looking introverted, looking to one another, clutching their children, scratching to get out, all facing what they know will be the last moments of their life. Maybe I'll update it to a scene in Darfur. I want to do this painting to show the sheer preciousness of life (all my paintings I want to show the sheer preciousness of life) and the vulgarity of our culture and our media and our own failure to recognize the truth about the human condition; the bliss, the tragedy, the struggle, the intensity of life in a pure state so that the viewer walks away feeling cleansed, uplifted, and alive. This does not have to be done "dramatically" either. I put dramatic in quotations because it can be the drama of a wilted flower, or of a snow covered patch of ground, or simply the color blue melting into a subdued violet. Those are dramas too, they are relevant, they matter. So I want to move forward with no sarcasm, no irony, no mean spirited wit, no cowardice. I want, dare I say it!, sincerity. How pitiful it is to live in a culture that fears sentimentality. I refuse to. I want my work to be brave. I have to be brave.

A lot of people say that the arts are useless in such matters. Bob Dylan, my hero, even said a song can't change the world. And he is right that art can't do it alone. You need institutions that facilitate positive actions in the world. But those institutions need a culture that is moved by it. The most important thing I learned in Barnes class while reading Aristotle was that every form of governing is corruptible. It is the people involved who carry the responsibility of maintaining it and corruption will come if the institution is left alone. I've heard my friends in the Roosevelt Institution say repeatedly that people have to much trust in the system. So I think change for the better is a cooperative effort between many different fields. We need formal changes to occur undoubtedly but at the same time we need cultural change to occur to get people to take advantage of those formal changes and to support and tend to them. No system is perfect, no law can ever fully take into account the complexity of our moralities but so long as we keep working progress can be made. So this is where I feel my role as an artist comes in (and hopefully not the only role I take on in my life). If I can contribute to the bettering of our culture, if I can offer an alternative to the way the media has made pornography out of the human condition, if I can inspire people to experience a greater depth of life, I can hopefully make a tiny bit of difference in the world. Hell Bob Dylan did it for me along with Rembrandt, Mark Rothko, and my teachers I have been fortunate enough to have in grade school, high school, the philosophy department, and in the art school. Big huge shifts in culture involve movement at all levels. My high school administration didn't support a lot of the things my teachers taught me which led to me being here and who I am today. So again, don't rely on the institution alone. To learn to draw the figure at 16 I had to pretend to be a college student and sit in on sessions at the local university. To learn about human rights we went to Czechoslovakia and turned our gaze back towards the United States. You must have experiences outside of the institution at times in order to think of new possibilities. It takes the responsibility of individuals who care. This is why I want to be an art teacher. I don't only want to help create a generation that is of great skill but also of great responsibility.

I apologize if you are weary of my ramblings about art. It is not out of any negligence towards the significance of politics and philosophy in this course but to the contrary. I have been moved and shaped by our studies, and am just trying to get the rest of my life to catch up. I have no plans of pursuing philosophy academically (outside of school I plan on continuing to read it diligently for the rest of my life) and that worries me. I know I want to be a painter, and that I want to get my masters and probably will teach art, and I know that studying philosophy has shaped how I will do that, but I guess I just don't want to let it go. I hope that if I keep on reading, keep on finding people to talk about it with, that it will still be hugely relevant in my life and in my work. Increasingly though, i fear loosing it, and imagine more and more what if I had more time? What if I could have gotten the full major? What would it be like at a graduate level? I don't know. I'll just keep on reading and writing no matter what I pursue professionally.

Overall I have to thank my classmates and faculty for how great this experience was as well. There were so many good conversations. It got to be exhausting. The discipline required to carry on any one of our many conversations is lost to most people I've met, particularly in common dialogue. But with these guys it just never ended. It was wonderful. I can't believe we could maintain a state of thoughtfulness for that long. It's a wonder we didn't go crazy from it. It was nice speaking my mind, being listened to, understood and responded to. At home I'm used to feeling like I'm talking to a brick wall which has allowed for me to develop a bad habit of getting a rise out of people for the sake of conversation. In school I'm used to being singled out or alienated by so called compliments like "your smart" and "god I don't think I could have the patience for that kind of work." It's like "gee thanks but if you just told me what was on your mind that would be so much better." Well none of that on this trip. It's hard to say where class ended and socializing began. There wasn't the abrupt shift, the feeling of sinking that came from talking about things that matter to bullshit. Even when we joked around and really did talk about bullshit it felt appropriate because it was the end of the day and not forced onto people when they honestly have something on their minds. So thank you class and faculty for this wonderful experience. I just hope I can retain it all.

David Plays Cello

2008-01-20T22:31:00.000-05:00

2008-01-04T10:16:00.001-05:00

My dad was reviewed in Art News! It was a very positive review and his work was considered "fresh." This is good to hear. Considering the fact that most openings I have ever been to are a bore I'd have to say yeah my fathers work can be very refreshing. So congradulations dad. Keep up the good work.

2008-01-04T10:14:00.000-05:00

I am currently in Prague. Feel a bit run down at the moment. But I'll post about it eventually. Maybe add all my journal entries like I did for New Mexico.

2007-12-31T20:17:00.000-05:00

It is the last day of 2007. I am sitting here feeling obligated to say something. I'm leaving for Prague in a couple days. Can't say I'm thrilled at the moment although I ought to be. I guess it's because I had a really great break and I hate to see it go. A lot of positive things happened. The first person I hung out with was Sydney and Rhonda. Sydney and I talked a lot about her college life as we ate at the village and then enjoyed a very long comfortable silence together driving around the city. I spent an afternoon with my Papa and I think after a long in depth conversation I left feeling like we had entered a new stage in our relationship. It was a great feeling. I feel older, more responsible and my family is proud of me. And I saw both sides of my family and had a great time with both. I played chess and checkers with Cullen, renewed my friendship with Danny and Martha, talked at great lengths with my aunts and uncles, and simply had a good time. I also spent a lot of time with Fran and Sean. One of the highlights of this was siting in Sean's room singing and playing songs which I realized is so much fun it's addictive. I hung out with Soyoung a lot too and have come to realize what a good friend she is. I also had dinner with Jessica one night at Ukrops and afterwards we watched Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads. I wish I spent more time with her. And Pat arrived in town too which was a lot of fun. We went and saw Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. We were meant to hang out with Margaret but that didn't work out. I might try and meet up with her tomorrow. I'm planned on meeting Pehanich and his wife Dolly for a dinner party at two tomorrow which should be a great time down in Petersburg. I am going to love Prague, but I am going to miss all these people. I'm going to miss walking through the street, eating at cafes and restaurants, staying up till 3 in the morning, and conversing face to face with these people. I'll literally miss being able to see them. I do have Hartford after Prague to look forward to as well with Meg who's absence aches, and all my college friends, and I'm sure after some time in Prague I'll someday miss it too. I miss just about every place I've ever been. Sicily, Paris, New Mexico, The Outer Banks. Seems like I'm always missing somebody. My whole life is too spread. It'll never be all together. And I'm not complaining. It's just a constant flood of emotions. I'm always looking forward, loosing touch, finding it again, saying hello, and saying goodbye. It's overwhelming.

Meghan Is Awesome

2007-11-24T21:57:00.000-05:00

Meghan is the greatest person ever. Like, ever.

Seriously.

Religious Experience

2007-11-07T10:23:00.000-05:00

While siting in the library reading Varieties of Religious Experience by William James I had a novel experience which I have not yet tried to reproduce and have my doubts as to whether it would even be possible to. The Lecture I was on was on what James calls the Healthy-Minded. I read over the various experiences of individuals who gave in to optimism and knew that everything was going to be alright. I thought back on a particular incident of my own from two summer ago. While on my lunch break at work I went from Oregon Hill where I was repairing a house to Belle Isle to cool down in the river. I grabbed a rock and held on letting water rush over my body. The current was felt so willful and strong. I thought to myself the entire universe is like this current. It can't be broken. I felt something primordial in me stir, something beyond words. I did not have a complete religious experience then but looking back on it I asked myself of the benefits (spiritually, creatively) I would gain if I just let go and gave in to that moment. I realize that the best things I have ever done where done in a transcendent state so why not say to tell with it all, this is truth, this is beauty, purpose, and a good life. I closed my eyes in the library and went back to that moment. Bliss began to melt over me, a familiar bliss, one I long for, and one that has seldom come about in recent years. I began to burn inside, it was glorious, it began to consume me, and then I thought to myself "no Miguel...not yet...not yet." I came back to my misery, my troubles. I wasn't ready to say goodbye to them. Something in me found nobility in my sadness because my sadness came with a journey that was honest to my conceptions of the world, and although there was a type of honesty in letting that experience overwhelm me. I just wasn't ready yet.

The following is a paper I just finished writing about the next lecture in Varieties titled "The Sick Soul." It will shed more light into my current state, I hope.

Miguel Carter-Fisher

PHI 290

Evil: The Sick-Soul

William James begins his lecture “The Sick Soul” by reflecting upon the healthy-minded conception of evil. A healthy-minded individual is one settles “his scores with the more evil aspects of the universe by systematically declining to lay them to heart or make much of them, by ignoring them in his reflective calculations, or eve, on occasion, by denying outright that they exist.” To the healthy-minded evil is a disease and to worry over the disease is in itself an additional form of that evil (121). The best thing to do about evil is to repent and go on as if you never had any relation to the sin. The sick-soul sees evil quite differently:

“There are people for whom evil means only a mal-adjustment with things, a wrong correspondence of one’s life with the environment. Such evil as this is curable, in principle at least, upon the natural plane, for merely by modifying either the self or the things, or both at once, the two terms may be made to fit, and all go merry as a marriage bell again. But there are others for whom evil is no mere relation of the subject to particular outer things, but something more radical and general, a wrongness or vice in his essential nature, which no alteration of the environment, or any superficial rearrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires a supernatural remedy. (127)” This later group is the sick soul.

The division of these two groups is based in how we experience the world around us. James states that recent psychology as found great use out of the term threshold, which is the point at which one state of mind passes into another. In general it is the amount of outer stimulus it takes to arouse one’s attention. For example in regards to sleep someone with a high threshold may sleep through noise that someone with a low threshold may be awakened by. The same applies to what may be called a fear, misery, or pain-threshold. James states that “The sanguine and healthy-minded live habitually on the sunny side of their misery-line, and the depressed and melancholy live beyond it, in darkness and apprehension.” He continues asking, “Does it not appear as if one who lived more habitually on one side of the pain-threshold might need a different sort of religion from one who habitually lived on the other?” (127-128) The following paragraphs shall highlight the ways in which evil is in our “essential nature, which no alteration of the environment, or any superficial rearrangement of the inner self, can cure. (127)”

Failure is one of these inherent parts of the human condition. “The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results. (131)” But this is just the beginning. If you push further beyond the misery-threshold even successful moments are vitiated.

Life and death are inextricably together, and if life is good its negation must be bad, therefore everything is tainted (131). The cures the healthy-minded provide, such as “Cheer up, old fellow, you’ll be all right erelong, if you will only drop your morbidness!” are the application of religious value to a happy-go-lucky contentment. These solutions are superficial and do not capable of curing the full depth of the sick-soul’s longing:

“The fact that we can die, that we can be ill at all, is what perplexes us; the fact that we now for a moment live and are well is irrelevant to that perplexity. We need a life not correlated with death, a health not liable to illness, a kind of good that will not perish, a good in fact that flies beyond the Goods of nature.” (132)

James soon after states that, “Old age has the last word: the purely naturalistic look at life, however enthusiastically it may begin, is sure to end in sadness. (132)”

Throughout the rest of the lecture on the sick-soul James gives examples of various experiences of those who fall into this category. He illustrates how melancholy changes our perceptions:

“When we come to study the phenomenon of conversion or religious regeneration, we shall see that a not infrequent consequence of the change operated in the subject is a transfiguration of the face of nature in his eyes. A new heaven seems to shine upon a new earth. In melancholiacs there is usually a similar change, only it is in the reverse direction. The world now looks remote, strange, sinister, uncanny. Its color is gone, its breath is cold, there is no speculation in the eyes it glares with. "It is as if I lived in another century," says one asylum patient.- "I see everything through a cloud," says another, "things are not as they were, and I am changed."- "I see," says a third, "I touch, but the things do not come near me, a thick veil alters the hue and look of everything."- "Persons move like shadows, and sounds seem to come from a distant world."- "There is no longer any past for me; people appear so strange; it is as if I could not see any reality, as if I were in a theatre; as if people were actors, and everything were scenery; I can no longer find myself; I walk, but why? Everything floats before my eyes, but leaves no impression."- "I weep false tears, I have unreal hands: the things I see are not real things." (141-142)

In the lecture he goes into much greater detail in the personal accounts of various individuals which shows differences in their melancholy and experience of it, but for this paper I will stop with the quote above.

James feels that morbid-mindedness ranges over the wider scale of experience. The healthy-minded method of ignoring evil, and “living simply in the light of good” is good as long as it works. For many it will work and there is nothing to be said against it as a religious solution. But as a philosophical solution it is inadequate. This is because the evil which it does not take into account are genuine portions of reality. James says, “they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth. (152)”

James later says, “It may indeed be that no religious reconciliation with the absolute totality of things is possible. Some evils, indeed, are ministerial to higher forms of good; but it may be that there are forms of evil so extreme as to enter into no good system whatsoever, and that, in respect of such evil, dumb submission or neglect to notice is the only practical resource.” He continues, “since the evil facts are as genuine parts of nature as the good ones, the philosophic presumption should be that they have some rational significance, and that systematic healthy-mindedness, failing as it does to accord to sorrow, pain, and death any positive and active attention whatever, is formally less complete than systems that try at least to include these elements in their scope.” (153-154)

James concludes that completest religions are those in which the pessimistic elements are best developed. He then uses Christianity and Buddhism as examples.

What really strikes me about evil to the sick-soul is that mental well being may not be dependent completely on the acceptance of new beliefs such as life after death and god, but also the denial of evils. So far, being a sick-soul myself, the greatest argument I have found in my own experience and in James for faith in God or any other religious object is its necessity for mental health. I believe it illustrates a dilemma, at least one I have experienced myself, over the choosing of truths. In all of James examples people are overtaken by their experience which largely is how it works, but in some individuals like myself there has been conflicting experience in which part of my being remains defiant. I have had moments of bliss that rush over me. Some of them have been in my mind religious experiences for a time, but physiological reasons for these experiences as well as a strong doubtfulness of religious experiences in general have often overshadowed and changed my original perception. I realize that our justification for an experience can become what the experience is to us just as our models of reality can be confused for the real thing. So James has opened up some questions to me. Do we have any choice in our justifications and reasoning in experience or are they completely predetermined by our temperament (for example could I have chosen to go with the religious rather than the physiological explanation of my own personal experiences)? If a choice is possible than I ask pragmatically which would be more useful? I am a firm believer in being open to new explanations and the benefits of critiquing one’s perceptions when new information comes about. It goes along with James’ pluralism and truth over the absolute Truth which has been very beneficial on some levels for me. But is it not also pragmatically beneficial to choose the religious explanation If that truth ensures my own mental health? If the meaning of something is what it does, than what happens when two conflicting meanings both have beneficial results? It leads me to a fork in the road where both paths lave me incomplete in some manner like our inability to get rid of evil inextricably bound to existence. I suppose these are questions any individual would have to take care of on his or her own, if they ever came across them.

2007-10-24T10:38:00.000-04:00

For those of you who don't know, I am officially an ass hole. I'm not sure how or why it happened, but I am repeatedly informed that it is the case. Getting along with people can be such a pain in the ass. Should I even bother trying? Intense conversations are the ones that I feel most equipped for, but trivial conversation can be torture. It's just a place where people can flaunt their inconsistencies and win debates by talking the loudest. That or call me random because I happen to have a thought that isn't completely aligned with their own. "God Miguel you could atleast pretend to be interested in what everyone else is talking about." Often they are right but sometimes I don't bother saying anything when people see people as a means. So and so is knowledgeable about this, and so and so is good at this, but god forbid there be any overlap. God forbid everyone having something to contribute or there being an common knowledge. God forbid there be any organized discourse. So I'll keep my mouth shut unless it's ghost stories which I find extremely entertaining, or if I'm asked for help in a painting. For all other social purposes I am useless.

Yesterday my friend Dan made me change my mind and organize my thoughts by challenging my perception of conceptual and aesthetic content in art. I have grown more tolerant on the conceptual end because of it. I have never had a conversation so good about these things with another art school student. He said he never has good philosophy conversations with philosophy students. It's a shame really. Everyone thinking their an expert in their field (and know nothing of other fields), stuck in their opinions, and abiding by a false hierarchy that states who knows what and who's opinion matters.

We're all so damn specialized and domesticated. Everything is a means to something else. I remember my RLC teacher Kerry Provost saying that college is not job preparation and it's frustrating when even parents see it that way. It's no mystery looking around campus as to who is just getting by, and who is digging in.

But how else could it be when we live in a society where everyone is their own isolated individual entity and who's beliefs are of no consequence to the greater community. Why should anyone ever have to engage with others?, to challenge themselves to do what is outside of their majors?, much less their ideologies? There is no room to better yourself, to learn from others, to have any real dialogue in a world like that.

Professor den Ouden had the students (In the class I'm preceptoring) read from his book Are Freedom and Dignity Possible? (which I highly recommend) the chapter "Nietzche's Theory of Excellence." In it he states "Theories of difference in postmodernisms risk turning difference into an absolute in the name of respecting cultural distinctiveness and importance of "otherness." I think this manifest itself clearly in how people speak to one another. "Everyone is titled to their opinion" and "Moralities are prejudice" I've heard plenty of times. Funny that this often comes from my more liberal friends who never think of the downside of their tolerance. There is such a thing as tolerating intolerance and I've come across it numerous times. One example is a girl in one of my classes defending her grandmothers opinion that "colored people don't belong in the white house" on the basis that she is old and from a different time. I believe that our beliefs if we truly are a community ought to have an impact on that community and to tolerate the opinion of another based on a category (old, black, female, religious, ex.) you are simply saying your opinion is of no consequence to me. To be a community we need to engage in real dialogue and stop being individualistic to a fault. Relationships matter.

How can you defend human rights in a postmodern society. As den Ouden says "If there are no universal human rights and responsibilities, then we have no right to intervene in spousal abuse or exploitive relationships such as slavery." I'm not saying we need to adopt some doctrine of human rights, like we have which is based in the enlightenment, and before people realized the world was an evolving thing. I'm saying we need new approaches to communicating in which our human rights, and views on the world in general are constantly under critique and instead of looking for the Truth, we look for the best truth. The wellbeing of people, and the enviornment should come before any static doctrines and dogmas. Professor Moen thinks pragmatism is the best system for this and from what I know of Philosophy right now I agree with her. (This is why I'm taking the classes on human rights in Prague and Krakow this winter). And as for our tolerance which leaves us all fragmented self gratifying 'others' to one another (and useless to the greater community), let me quote Professor Barnes.

"To 'live and let live' is alright, but to live and help live is much better."

So I'm fucking sick and tired of being called an ass hole. I'm sick and tired of pointless conversations where stubbornness and self entitlement stand in the way of any form of mutual understanding, and any possibility to apologise if one has said something to wrong the other. No wounds can heal in a community so long as everyone's "seperate but equal." Our schools may all be integrated but segregation is still at the heart of our culture. It has not dissapeared, only dispersed, and diversified, leaving us all strangers to one another.

As a painter I want to work on creating art that is pluralistic. I want to be an artist who happens to be a biracial male not a biracial male artist. I'm sick of seeing advertisements for galleries with an ethnic focus. I rather see a gallery that has the work of various groups all there on the wall together. I want to create work that is emotionally inspiring and moving without any gimmick or agenda. Basically I want to take what I know, who I am, and what I can do, and use them to engage with others, contributing to the experience of my community. I am not interested in shoving my voice down others throats either. I believe good art speaks for itself, and implication, context, and somewhere between over-explanation and complete vagueness, is where respect for one another exist. If I put a painting up on the wall, I want my audience to know that when they look at it they have the right to bring all their thoughts and experiences to the plate just as much as I do no matter what their age, occupation, gender, ethnicity, religion, philosophy, ex., may be.

My Dad's Show

2007-10-07T19:22:00.001-04:00

Untitled," 2006, oil and cold wax on panel, 54 x 54"

http://www.ardengallery.com/Fisher/bill-fisher.htm

My friends and I all rode up to Boston to see my dad's opening. It was a great evening. Meg, Jenna, Matej, Rohan, and I all rode up in Matej's car. When we got out front and looked up I saw the blue painting I dared my father to do was up in the window. My Uncle Boby and Joe were there from San Francisco and my grandmother came up with my dad. My grandfather twisted his leg and couldn't make it which left me feeling really sad. I wouldn't mind going home to check up on people. My dad sold one of my favorite paintings to Jimmi Berk, a distant relative he hadn't seen in ages, and another one shortly after. Hope informed me that a guy from Art News might write a review on the show and I told her my dad mentioned it and told me not to say anything. She told me that was a good idea because he didn't want to jinx it. I got a phone call the following day telling me that someone is interested in another painting and that the show is going to be reviewed. Its such wonderful news. CONGRADULATIONS DAD!

2007-10-07T19:19:00.000-04:00

Looking at old photos can be heartbreaking. I've been to a lot of places, befriended a lot of people, and wish I could hold on to it just a little bit more. Theres no telling where it's all going, and who will be with you.

Kerry

2007-10-03T14:26:00.000-04:00

I miss 5 years ago, when I was 15, and am now 20, when Kerry, Sarah, and I would walk to the river. We would trespass through neighborhoods I didn't dare enter as a child for fear of confederate flags. These flags were occasionally over the heads of old red neck men siting on their porches with big white beards and a focused ignorent hatred on their face. Their faces pointed right at us. Sarah was oblivious to this, I was frightened, but Kerry was ready for it. We would tread along past them towards the train tracks which we would also trespass along to get down to the bridge that leads to Belle Isle.

We would ride our bikes around the city a lot too. None of us drove back then and at the time would have chosen not to. We once passed a group of protesters by the Civil War museum waving the confederate flags. They were in an uproar in their period dress against a monument to Abraham Lincoln. "GET THE FUCK OUT MY CITY YOU NAZI PIGS!" Kerry would yell. "STOP KILLING THE WHITE MAN IN DIXIE" one of them yelled at me. After that afternoon Sarah took down the confederate flag she hung on her wall. I was confused by the run in and a little surprised but Kerry was ready for this type of situation.

It seemed to me like he had always been ready. He would take me to Chop Suey, an independent book store to read Jack Kerouac. He took me to his attic/bedroom where he wrote long passages from On The Road on his walls. We both read Dharma Bums and hated the chapter with the orgy in it and how it was used as an excerpt in The Beat Reader. It could have been the parts about religion, or nature, or poetry, or the void, but no. It had to be the part about the orgy or the drinking or the drugs. Kerry was good at filtering out the garbage in the people he read and continuing to admire what was worth while. We both loved to listen to Bob Dylan. He gave me a copy of either The Times They are A' Changin' or Highway 61 Revisited. Those were my first two Bob Dylan albums. Which one he gave me I do not remember. It very well could have been both. I remember Kerry saying, "Did you ever notice Miguel, that in the Lonesome Death Of Hattir Caroll Dylan never once said that Hattie Caroll was black and that William Zanzinger was white. I think thats brilliant. It says a lot that he didn't even have to say it, and given the circumstances, we assumed." I in return introduced him to Leonard Cohen. We liked the beauty of his early lyrics and the bitterness of the later. Our education after school was often more productive that what happend in school. We started to fancy ourselves as Americans, but not just any America, the real America, the America Walt Whitman wrote about.

We also talked about Howell and social progress and change. He gave me a zine writen by a girl who was raised in an alcoholic house hold that used her experience to shape her view on opressive government. Kerry was an anarchist. I was just a 15 year old kid. I knew other anarchist, well one other, but he never had any interest in explaining how he saw the world to me. He did talk to Kerry though on the bus ride from school and I would listen to them talk about the worker, and the revolution, and the evil business practices of major corporations. I am not an anarchist, but I will say that Kerry encouraged in me a criticism of authority and habit that may have otherwise been self centered. So many people I know hate the cops until the cops do something beneficial for them. And I say this having experienced in my own personal family abuses made by the police department which I will not go into. People like that think about themselves, not whats best for the community. We live in a society that thrives on those kind of people.

Kerry loved dumpster diving. We would ride our bikes behind businesses and steal the food that was being thrown out when it was still good. I was very skinny back then. It's all very romantic to remember. Kerry would often steal the food and use it for Food Not Bombs. They would feed homeless people every weekend. We would eat at the Vegan buffet at Panda Garden too. I was pretty much a vegetarian by association that year. I still haven't regained my former appetite for red meat and don't plan to (although I do have a cheeseburger every blue moon).

I never agreed with all of Kerry's practices and stances and looking back still don't. He sometimes seemed so foreign, with pamphlets talking about socialism and friends he had in communes. It was all so bizarre to me. Somtimes he'd make me feel like a complete coward. It would be so alienating. When we disagreed Sarah who often knew little of the situation would side with him just to get at me. I never won any arguments. I'd feel like he had everything and I had nothing.

This was not often the case. Most the time there was a great deal of communication and sharing. My house back then was always full of people. There was Calvet who was black and from the ghetto a few blocks away. He was my frist real friend. The first to sleep over and watch horror movies with. There was Jackson who was from the wealthier end of town who was white and Catholic (Kerry once protested against his parents in front of an abortion clinic). Like Calvet he was into sports, cheese burgers, and basketball jerseys. There was Sarah who was pleased with simplicity being from a small city (Petersburg) and fairly sheltered. She didn't think much about politics and conflict. There was little conflict in her. She would take in all the small experiences and enrichen her life with them. She was wise and naive at the same time. And Kerry, he was an angry bisexual anarchist vegan who shattered our perception of the typical 14 year old boy. None of us were much alike. It's amazing that we all managed to all be friends. It was a great time in my life.

Kerry always came and went. I once told him, "when you come over I don't know if your going to stay 4 hours, or 4 days." I loved how unpradictable he was. He laughed so hard when I told him that. I think he was flattered. I hope he was flattered. At 16 would roam up and down the east coast and once out to California (where he got a tatoo of the horse on the cover of Catcher in the Rye." He didn't go to high school so he had time for these adventures. I didn't seem him during this time though. It seemed to be a time when he would dissapear more and more until suddenly he was just gone. I'd have no idea how to find him.

A couple years passed without seeing him. That is until this one strange day. I was thinking about whether I should entre my home as I stood on my front porch. If I did I might not have come out for the rest of the day and would miss out on living. Suddenly I felt a longing to just start walking, and not just to walk but to walk in a specific direction. I said to myself "okay Miguel lets see where this leads you." After about 6 blocks I heard drums and I followed them into a protest. I started to walk away from it thinking okay theres a bunch of people not like me, but something drew me back in. "Why walk away Miguel? Be brave, and check it out." As I got closer I realized it was a potest against carpet mining. This was a cause I believed in and I moved in closer and then bam, there he was. I should have been shocked but wasn't. I thought "this is why I wasn't supposed to go inside today." He didn't seem shocked to see me either. After short, and I mean very short, greetings, we walked with the protestors until we got in front of some corporate building down town. The protestors yelled out stupid unrelated things like "fuck the cops" and so on. I said to Kerry that all they were doing was giving these yuppies a spectacle to tell the Mrs. about when they get home. "Honey would you believe those crazy hippies today." Kerry agreed and said "I don't see much change coming from all of this." We both agreed that there had to be a better way and with that we left and walked down to the river.

There was a rope swing there that I had always been afraid to go off of. It hung beneath the train tracks. I didn't fear it just because of it's height but because there were always a lot of scenesters and groups of college aged kids hanging around it. This made me feel unwelcome. I thought to myself "the rope swing is not for me." Kerry encouraged me to go. "I don't have my suit" I said. "Just do like me and swim in your underwear" he replied. So I did and I went of the rope swing which was terrifying for a moment. I accidently hit my genitals against one of the knots on the way down which hurt all the way into my stomach and my heart seemed to beat so hard it hurt in my chest. I didn't complain though. When I hit the water I felt like life had be affirmed.

The Sicily Exhibit

2007-09-22T22:51:00.000-04:00

The show looked real good. My dad came up to see it. It was great fun. I loved to see people pause in front of my work. It sounds pompus to say but who denies the longing for an audience in whatever craft they take on. The response to the work, and not just mine, seemed to be quite favorable. Meghan, Nick, Aaron, Jenna, and Mattej came as well along with Josh, Greg and other people I was aquainted with. Mary Frey, who was my photo teacher a year ago was really enthusiastic about my work and said it was good to read an intelegent artist statement. She is a blunt woman who definately holds my respect. For her to say that was quite flattering. She wanted to buy a painting I did in Segesta. It's of green rolling hills above two little farm houses and a storm brooding over heard at dusk. With my fathers council I sugested 300 dollars and with a wink over her shoulder she said she'd discuss it with me next week. Jeremiah was great to talk to as well. He was talking to my dad a lot about travel and stuff. He told us about Alan Feltus as an example of an artist who just picked up and moved to Sicily. I was shocked. "you know Alan Feltus?.....I wrote him an email when I was a junior in high school because I liked his paintings a lot." Jeremiah told me he'd say his student was the emailer and I said he probably wouldn't remember I imagine. My dad said he would because to get an email expressing appreciation for one's work is not common to most artist. I don't know. I love how small the world is. I can't help but feel like I'm in write place. I saw Matej pointing his finger at one of my paintings and Jenna said "Mattej's over there explaining your work to others." That was very flattering. If Mattej wasn't here I don't know what I'd do. He's a "traditionalist" like myself full of romance, passion, and a total disregard for what's "practical." I see him as a comrade. Meghan looked so pretty. Oh god she looked so pretty. This blue dress she wore over her grey/green pants, and that bright red hair, and all those freckles. Her skin was perfect. I love her. Her favorite painting in the series was the one of the sunrise over the ocean and a little fishing boat going out to sea. This was the moodiest of the paintings acording to Jeremiah (and I agree) and the favorite of both him and my father. I wish I had spent time talking to my classmates. They all seemed to be in their own circles of friends which I did not want to intrude on because I'm so shy. I'd test the water by trying to see if eye contact can be made and when it wasn't I didn't aproach. It was a great time.

It was good spending time with my dad too. It just hit me that he's gone again and my heart is a bit heavy. As much as we seemingly don't get along I do miss him when he's not around. I miss all of my family. I'm glad he was here today. After the show he came over and watched Malena with Meg and me. I could tell he really enjoyed the movie. Meg did too she says. It was so funny. When my dad had to leave the cab got here earlier than we expected so we had to run from the 4's to the Lincoln Theater. It was halariously awkward running across campus and past other students with my dad. He called and said he felt bad he didn't hug me. I said a jog across campus is a much more memorable way to say goodbye.

Wholly Saturated

2007-09-22T22:38:00.000-04:00

I've been going through all my music listening to everything from country, to italian movie soundtracks, to cuban music. It's amazing when I think of all the music there is. I'm also making a list of movies I want to see and movies I've seen and want to own. It's amazing how many different movies there are. I'm about to finally read Harry Potter as I promised Meg I would and after that some Greek Philosophy. It's amazing how much there is to read. I'm also looking at the websights of painters. Some of them I know and some I do not. It's amazing how many works of art there are to look at. There is just so much good stuff in the world. To jump from one to another saturating myself has to be one of healthiest things I ever do. Without a religion, and often depressed and detached, I can re-engage and take great joy in knowing that there are more means of expression in the world than I can ever wrap my mind around. It can never all be sumed up in a single experience. There is too much to enjoy to get hung up on silly ideas like taste, atleast not for long. I rather take it all in stride. One new experience after another. Even if it's siting here doodling listening to music at my desk.

The Date

2007-09-22T02:41:00.000-04:00

Meghan and I went on a date tonight. It was the best date ever. I dressed up to the best of my ability and even tucked in my shirt. She wore a denim dress over a brown tank top (which I later found out was Jenna's). Both of us almost settled for our usual jeans and a t-shirt but decided against it. We both were happy we both decided to dress up. We took the shuttle to bishops square and ate at Macaroni Grill. It was delicious. There was Bread, Capuchino, Mushroom Ravioli, Chicken, Pasta, Shrimp, and Rasberry Lemonade. We then went to blockbuster for a long time and rented Melena. We took the shuttle back to campus and as we walked pass Konover we overheard a band playing. It was free and I was curious so we went inside. They were called Rolla and they were fantastic. I know own both their cd's. There was a whole 10 or 11 of us in the crowd but that didn't stop them from being full of energy. I told Meg they were playing this day because it was our date and she laughed at me. Shes called me a dork so many times tonight. We stoped by my place and borrowed Amile from Greg and then watched it over at Meghans while drinking Orangina we bought at Konover so we could be as French as we could be. We both really enjoyed the movie. Afterwards we layed in bed listening to a cd I burnt her. The cd took me ages. I had to find lyrics that were right for her. We got about halfway through until Jenna got back from her date. We talked a bit and then I had to go. We will get breakfast and watch Melena in the morning. My dad should be geting in a little after 2 tommorow for the Sicily show at 5! It's all very exciting. The last few days have been well prety damn shity. I have been numb, apathetic, unproductive, and detached. I'm still worried about academics but thanks to tonight, I think everything will be alright. So if your reading this Meghan, I love you, and thank you so much. I've needed a night like tonight for a long time. Your amazing.

2007-09-18T19:29:00.000-04:00

I feel better now. Got all that out. I looked at paintings in books, watched the sky out my window, listened to music. After so much anxiety its amazing how easy it was to just get in the moment. This must be what it is to resolve something, to get it off your chest and I mean really not I feel sorta better now that I talked to someone. I called Carlos and had a really pleasant conversation about music and how he won't buy a cell phone. "My son Julian he say come on it is here touch it father pero you know Miguel I am scared of these things." I'm happy.

Does It Matter If The Truth Is True

2007-09-18T18:25:00.000-04:00

"And I know the hand of God is the promise of my own"
-Walt Whitman

I used to think that truth was the goal. And this truth was objective, cold, for better, or for worse. Now I am begining to abadon that idea. Now I find myself believing people should believe what makes the world a better place whether it's true or not. Part of me wants the two to be one in the same. It wants absolute turth, and for it to be good. But the athiest in me doesn't think so, and so he defends the Christian in others. He says, "Let him have his God if it means he'll be a better person." Sometimes in the afternoon, when I'm alone, in my swealtering unairconditioned room, full of orange light, I lay down, and fear I'm destroying myself. What if the only truth I find is that I would have been happier if I never looked for truth. Thoughts like this last as far as remembering how not being religious has made me a more compassionate person. The world is bigger. There is so much more to learn when you haven't got it all figured out. And I know that morality isn't in a book, but in the intelect, compassion, and communication between people. Those are all positives. The negative is what I have denied myself. It is the promise that somehow it all goes on forever, that there is no end, and we'll all be together again someday. I'll gladly debate theology until I hit that sore spot, and then then I find myself biting my tongue for fear of shattering other people's faith as mine was.

What is "It"

2007-09-18T17:09:00.001-04:00

Today in my class on William James we discussed his third lecture in his book Pragmatism. It was titled "Some Metaphysical Problems." During the class Professor Barnes felt that James overemphasized the use of verbal solutions as a means of geting around metaphysical problems. Looking back that pretty much was the focus of the whole lecture although at the time the idea of a verbal solution was very new to me and didn't seem to get old at all.

Infact the point has really stuck with me. An example of a verbal solution used is substance. We will say that something is of substance when it is possible to experience it through our senses, but when you ask well what substance is all you can do is explain it through your senses. It is a word used to describe a category of experience, then turned to mean that it is the cause of the experiences. Barnes said that substance in this sense is a wire, and our experiences of whatever the object is are hung from the wire like laundry. He then went on that to say that "it is heavy, it is hard, it is round, but what is it?" My guess would be a bowling ball. But if asked what a bowling ball was what could you say other than it "is heavy, it is hard, it is round" and so on. The only difference would be describing it's function which I'll get back to in a moment. Ultimately what I am trying to say is an object is what it is described to be. It is a category of experiences.

(After about a half an hour it struck me. The "it" or verbal solution is very much what representation is in painting. Abstract painters obliterate it so that all you are left is the adjetives like "red, hard, slick, fuzzy." Really good realist often aim to get rid of the "it" by focusing on the adjetives that make it up. For example "It is not a tree, It is a blue shape, against a lighter brown shape, with green and red shapes over it." Atleast this is what I have been striving to do as a painter for some time now.)

Barnes attributes this necessity for a verbal solution on our necessity for a noun in our western languages. You don't describe blue, blue describes an object and that object is made up of other descriptions. Now that I realize this relationship I am begining to think of it's function and where the concept of a noun even comes from. I think it is simply to identify objects that serve a type of functional purpose in our lives. I say type of functional and not simply functional because I believe that there are other things that serve a function in our lives other than what's classified as an object. I think that wet, and bumpy, and bright, and grey are important just like door, and swimming, and food, and friend. Maybe the distinction in these concepts comes from a hierarchy of needs. Maybe food takes on a greater function than blue because without food you die and well I don't know what happens without blue. So I know that it is necessary for us to think in these terms of the "it" so we can function in the world but I can't help but wonder what would happen if we strained in other directions.

What if we questioned our means of describing things, rather than just what is being described. Maybe being more aware of this will make us more critical of things we take for granted and things that are just verbal solutions rather than real solutions for real conflicts. Perhaps we would be better at seeing the world as it is instead of as the symbols and ideas we use to generalize it. Our model of reality might be a bit closer to reality. I think that very beneficial things could come from this.

Playing the Part

2007-09-16T14:32:00.000-04:00

I hate how people are type casted into their own lives. I can't stand when anyone tells me who I am or what I can and can not acomplish. I thought when I left high school that I would be able to have a more relaxed comfortable open personality. In some cases that has been true but for the most part little has changed. I'm Miguel who is good at being a critical mean ass hole, and I'm Miguel who is good at painting. Hell looking back on high school there was more to me then than now. And don't get me wrong there is a lot more to me but my peers know little of me as I'm sure I know little of them. I wonder how many people I know are traped inside their own social lives. Seems like your either stuck with people or stuck with out them and in any case your always stuck.

Three weeks and I'm already tired of it all. Maybe solitude is the only real freedom. Nah it's not. I supose some intangible balance that comes like a inexplicably good day. Well maybe not for everyone. Maybe just me. Maybe other people have it all the time. Who knows?

Tough and Tender Minded

2007-09-10T00:19:00.000-04:00

Professor Kline used this example of a Turkish Brothel to illustrate differences in romanticism and neo-classicism. Which one looks more honest to you? The first one is Delecroix, and the second Ingres.

I was reading William James work "Pragmatism" and very early on he set up a dynamic I like a lot. He knowingly overgeneralized philosophy in the tender-minded and the tough-minded. The tender-minded are the rationalist. They are described as "rationalistic (principles), intelectualistic, idealistic, optimistic, religious, free-willent, monistic, and dogmatical." The tough-minded are "empiricist (facts), sensationalistic, materialistic, pessimistic, irreligious, fatalistic, pluralistic, sceptical." This dynamic I feel relates to the previous blog. As far as painting goes it is the difference between the classicalist (rationalist) and the romantic (empiricist). I do not think that every form of romanticism fits as empiricist. Perhaps automatic painting, expressionism and other more intuitive 20th century processes that focus more on sensory content rather than literal content are better examples. Other similar contrast would be the rigid geometric compositions and idealized figures of the renaissance, and then the looser life like work of rembrandt and other baroque painters. Historically the pendelum has been swinging between romanticism and classicism for ages.

I think that I used to be a rationalist to a fault. Now I find myself very much into empiricism. I had hated the room an emphasis on empiricism left for things to be subjective. I liked a rational ordered wholistic universe and loathed postmodernism, which I still do, and the idea that subjectivity knows no bounds. This has not changed. What has changed is that now I can see the balance between the tough and tender minded and I see liberation in our isolated existances. It makes it so we always have something new to share with one another. The complexity of harmonies and relationships we each have in life and the more that are created through our many ways of communicating are awe inspiring.

I'm starting to see the middle ground. Infact I was just having a discussion earlier with some friends about whether one should paint rationalisticaly with form and space in mind (how I initially learned) or should they simply ignore what they conceive and paint empirically seeing things as they are in abstract shapes and colors. I learn towards the later as a painter but realized the necessity of the prior for people in other fields such as illustration. This resolution I have come to on the issue is you use what tools best serve your goals. Sometimes you have to do your best make up reality with what you know. Sometimes you have to do your best to ignore what you think you know in order to see what is really there. I think it's obvious that this is not just an idea about art but all of life. The empirical aproach can teach you things you can use rationaly. Maybe our minds must swing like the pendilum as well. This reminds me of Socrates in the Apology. He claimed he was the wisest man because he knew he knew nothing.

"Let's not confuse the precision of our concepts with the fuzziness of our world"

2007-09-06T17:42:00.000-04:00

Bill Fisher

Stephen Clark - Blue Campaign

"Let's not confuse the precision of our concepts with the fuzziness of our world"
My teacher, Professor Barnes said that in my Philosophy Seminar on William James. From there he went into the idea of truth and knowledge and the limitations of it. We can't know the world outside of our own experience. Descartes sugested an evil genius that keeps the real world and the world of our perceptions separated from one another. My teacher said "the right answer to that is, Who Cares? this is our world and all we have to acomidate." From there I thought about Science and how we build models to understand things that and endlessly complicated and how we test these models empirically to see if they are close enough to what's real to work. I thought about what I had recently read in Native American Philosophy. It said that Westernern philosophy generally wants all knowledge, and Native American philosophy settles for the knowledge to do what they need to do. This made me ask myself are our actions to gain knowledge, or do we need to know things to execute our actions. I think it's a bit of both. The Native American philosophical attitude on this brought me back to William James and Charles Peirce. He said the pragmatic meaning of something is how a response meets our expectations. I'm having trouble with this concept but Barnes explained it to this effect. The definitions we use are only to point us in the right direction. You can explain what a pencil is and try to define it to someone who is from outer space and knows little of our world and you'd never know if they understood unless you said to pick up the pencil. If he picks up a book instead clearly he didn't. Meaning is created by action to serve our purposes. I have been thinking about the implications this has on human relationships and our ability to communicate. After all this is all about trying to acomidate a world that only exist in your experience, full of people, all of which only know the world they have experienced. Seems like everything always comes back to that.

So in class I got an idea for an art show. You see in Richmond the whole issue or "organic versus geometric" or "nature vs. man made" is a common theme in local art. I think it is because it is impossible not to see the tention in Richmond. The old gutted frames of buildings filled with bushes and vines are a clear example of how nature harmonizes/imposes with the man made. The dirty river water, sidewalks, and tention created throughout the urban skylines shows how the man made harmonizes/imposes with nature. I'd like to round up the artist I know who deal with this and have a show about it because I feel what runs deeper in the relationship they are exploring than the obvious urban versus nature but the idea of the natural world and the model of the world we create to acomidate to it finding harmony. In this regard I do not see painters exploring their own thoughts and ideas to be much different than scientist puting a new theory or concept to the test.

I guess it is because with our embodied conciousness we have no means of ever reaching any solid ground and this not a bad thing. One thing I learned recently in Native American Philosophy is that some Native American cultures take what questions you ask and how you ask them very seriously because these questions have an immediate effect on the world around us. With that in mind, no scientist, and no artist, of any sort will ever be able to perfectly replicate nature. But we need to keep on testing our models and looking for harmonies because the more harmonious a relationship we can create between us and the worlds around us whether it be the envirornment, or your best friend, the better chance we have of taking care of the world and leting the world take care of us.

So yes we do need to stop confusing the precision of our concepts with the fuzziness of the world, and part of that means obliterating the precise lines we draw that alienate us in this increasingly wired, globalized world. Religious entitlement is an example. It is no longer a world that can afford for people to think "were god's chosen people," and I don't know if it ever was. Such destinctions are foolish and harmful. I think wiping away the lines that draw these destinctions is synonymous with compassion.

Displaced

2007-09-03T14:44:00.000-04:00

The night before I left was troubling. My mother arrived at my grandparents house where my father and I packed her van with all my college stuff. I tried to get her to take a look at the painting I did of Meg. She said oh that's lovely and turned away continuing to talk to my grandparents. It was at this point that I finall accepted that my mother will always be interested in me but never my interest and the same goes for the entirety of my family. Kaya and TJ were upstairs playing with toys I didn't even know were in my grandparents house. I gave them their gifts. A turtle for TJ and a mermaid for Kaya. I bought them at Nauticus. Kaya is very interested in Meg so that's the dolls name now. They left and went in to Richmond to my uncle Rod's and then my aunt Wanny's. I told them I had things to pick up and would meet up with them later.

Leaving was a hassle. I just wanted the damn car keys because the amp and guitar wouldn't be safe to leave in the bed of the truck. There was a moment of confusion where my grandfather wasn't listening to me and my mother was having her own separate conversation with him. Finally my grandmother asked do you want the car keys and I firmly said yes to emphasize the simplicity of my request so I could hurry up and leave.

I got in the car and drove out to Seans. I greeted his family which seemed to be nearing the end of their dinner at half past 9 (which I asumed was because Sean had plans during the usual dinner hours and they wanted to eat with him before he left in the morning). They are never surprised to see me and I like that. Sean and I went to his room where I imediately grabed his sisters guitar where we goofed off. I said the spaniard in me has to come out and played some extremely mellow dramatic faux flamenco guitar. We talked about how we would record a cd the next summer and then passed the guitar back and forth playing the riff to Voodoo Child. We then talked about apathy and irony and how neither of us wanted anything to do with it when it came to writing songs. We talked about John Lennon a while, said our goodbyes, and then I was off.

It was a really nice visit. There was no awkward pauses or breaks. It just flowed. I felt extremely confortable and listened to Nick Drake as I drove back towards the city. I took a route I almost never take which made it more exciting. I loved the feeling of independence, just me and the road. I felt very much like myself and very happy.

When I got to my Papa's my mom hadnt quite left yet. She told me she'd meet me at Wanny's. When she did leave I talked to my papa for a long time. I love my papa. It felt good talking to him. I could tell he was very proud of me. I then went in the back to see my uncle Rod. He told me some funny stories about how he "went to college, but never to class" and how he was friends with the security guard so he'd be hanging out with all these wild young women in the girls dorm while my uncle Brandon searched all over for him. We had a great time. He then asked me if I wanted some rubbers. I hesitated for a moment and said "well...yeah sure I'll take them." When I saw the size of the package I realized there was no efficient way to conceal them. I grabed a small plastic bag. "I can't take this Rod I gotta say bye to Papa." Rod said, "Boy he's so old he don't know what those things are, I give ya 20 dollas if he ask you what you got in that bag, and don't you get him to ask you somethin so you can take my 20 dollas." "But Rod I'll be sweatin bullets." "He won't ask you." "Well if he does I'm gonna say Rod made me take them and run out as fast as I can." I eventually decided to go. I said bye and I love you to Rod and then I went and said bye and I love you to Papa with my bag of condoms. Rod was right he didn't ask. My heart was pounding. I gave him a hug and as he watched me walk to the car as he always does I ran. once the bag was in the car I felt safe again and waved bye to Papa as I drove towards my aunts.

I realized then how I was myself again but a different self. I was still so intimidated by Papa. The only thing that had changed was now I seeked his aproval as opposed to fearing his dissaproval. I still felt pretty good.

At my aunts my mom was outside moving the car seats from her van to Wanny's who would watch TJ and Kaya while we drove up to school. My mom was tired and even less interested in my interest. So was the rest of the family. I felt incredibly alien around them. I got along just fine but it was frustrating. I knew then there was no point in trying. The only success I could ever show to most of them would be my happiness and my money. I felt terribly alienated. I was still happy to see them all. They all seemed distant. The only person I felt actually engaged with me was Sam who had just gotten home from a party. He was 17 now, a few inches taller, and his voice had noticibly deepend. I just wanted to leave. So I held Kaya and Sam and I let her "steal our noses" till my mom was ready to put her to bed. I said my goodbyes which was passive on all sides. I feel fine saying this right now because I know this blog will never be read by any of them.

The drive home was so intense. I thought about how different my experience was at Sean's, my Papa's, and my aunt Wanny's. I tried to reason it out. Was it age?, culture?. I was too tired and eventually that didn't matter. I tried to find some confort in Meg but she was busy and after I talked for about 10 minutes she had little more than "I gotta go bye." My eyes burned. I felt like I could cry. I didn't know why I was sad. I thought about Sarah too and how much fun we had painting the last week. I couldn't quite rap my head around our friendship. I was just glad we had one. I like her new boyfriend. He's a really good guy. She wants to meet Meg. Later my mom asked me if Meg and Sarah and I would be able to hang out together? I said yes. She asked why and I didn't know. I said it was perhaps because time heals. That was a lie. What healed Sarah and I's friendship was that we grew and despite all the terrible things done I could not shake that the fact that deep down I just wanted her to be happy no matter what. The answer was that we genuinely care about each other. I should have told her that. I asume she was only asking because of whatever conflict she was having with Trent and his ex wives.

I wanted to see meghan. I wanted my family to know me as well as Sean did. it all made me question the entire concept of family to begin with. I took comfort in how they would always love me but I wondered if they knew who they loved. Did the Miguel they know and love still exist and if so did I know him? I'm not sure. I went to bed feeling like hell.

Apollo

2007-08-30T23:31:00.000-04:00

I'll miss my cat while I'm away at school. He and I have a turbulent history. There was that time he swatted at me and I chased him into the kitchen where he was too fat to make it from the counter to the top of the refrigerator. I can still see that look of terror in his eyes with his ears low to his head. He made a lot of noise knocking over pots and pans as he kicked his legs furiously trying to hold on. But all that's behind us now. Now we are buddies. When I come back to the apartment he meows for a while from behind the couch. Once he realizes I won't come to him he comes to me wherever I am and demands attention for a while. He visited me recently while I was taking a nap. I found out he made a fine pillow. Apollo is the greatest fat cat I've ever met.

2007-08-06T21:40:00.000-04:00

Late one night while hanging out with Meg I looked up at the clock and noticed it was 2:22. After that I'd sometimes talk to her on the phone and our phone calls would be 1:11. Or i bought some food and she was with me and the price came out $7.77. That kinda weirdness happend a lot and I always make it a point to call her when I notice it's 4:44 and stuff like that. After a few weeks this summer I noticed that my studio number was 222. A few days ago I learned that Rothko's studio number was 222. There is absolutely no point to this that I know of. I just think it's cool.

Is there Anything to be Done?

2007-08-04T20:14:00.000-04:00

A few nights ago I watched a dedication concert for Leonard Cohen. It was called I'm Your Man and I strongly recommend it. I found company in the strange performers. Many of which I never heard of like Antony, Beth Orton, and Teddy Thompson. Some I was already familiar with like U2, Rufus Wainwright, and Nick Cave. For me, they were all unusual to the mainstream, even U2, because in interviews I find myself relating and having compassion towards them for their idealism despite their superstar status. The others had my compassion too, but because of their humanity (and this is not to say that U2 is lacking this). They seemed real to me like Tom Waits. Some of them had incredible vocals but there was still something unpolished about it. Martha Wainwright had a beautiful voice that was a bit peculiar, and I loved how she pulled her face into a tense frown as she sang with her bottom teeth showing. In one segment Bono said that Leonard Cohen’s lyrics made the world full of vivid color. I knew what he meant and thought back on a time I was sitting numb on a tour bus in London and the only song that made me feel anything at all was Suzanne. "The sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbor" is one of my favorite lines ever written. Then I thought back on an earlier segment where Nick Cave talked about how discovering Leonard Cohen when he was young made him feel like he had stumbled onto something that separated him from his conservative town.

Then I thought back on the criticism I have gotten for listening to Leonard Cohen by people who don't like them. It got to me at times, I suppose when I was more impressionable, and somehow I had stayed vulnerable up until this moment. I felt validated and perfectly unashamed not just to listen to Leonard Cohen, but to long to satisfy whatever part of me related to those unusual performers. It was the same part of me that wanted to be like Bob Dylan taking off for Greenwich Village, only there isn't any Greenwich Village anymore. At last not the one he went to. And certainly not the one the abstract expressionist worked in, not now, since the New York art world seems to do nothing more than celebrate its former glory in Chelsea, playing it safe, keeping it boring, and all heroism is dead.

And this leads me now to think of Rothko and this series I saw called "Simon Schama's Power of Art" which covered eight artists and ended with him (I highly recommend watching the series). Rothko to me is exactly what our culture needs more of. He wanted to create a silence or break in the commotion of our usual shallow capital driven lives to ground us in what it means to be human. His work is stylistically bold, and even more effective, probably because boldness was not created for boldness sake, just as softness was not for softness sake, and color for colors sake, or light for lights sake. There was more. He was digging deep down into feelings described best in his following quote:
"I’m not an abstractionist. I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on."

That's the kind of painter I want to be. One that anchors your feet, puts a weight in your chest, and resonates in you when you leave like a Sunday after church, or a bithday party when you were too young to clearly remember other than how much fun you had, or the first budding impulse of sexuality, love, rejection, depression, alienation, and more than anything I want to create those moments I've written about, that exist outside of the regular flow of daily life, that seem to call back to the very core of our being. All the work I do eventually comes back to that. They have been described as silence and I think it is the silence Rothko was also striving to create only his was far more alarming and pierced far far far deeper than anything I have accomplished. I know exactly what Rothko means by grounded in humanity. I want to create that memory from your childhood that you never forget, and perhaps are never quite sure why.

For me, it was right before first grade and I was looking out the window of a house after moving back into Richmond. It was something about looking beyond the wooden fence which was draped in vines to my left, to the brick wall on my right, which separated the patio beneath from street outside and how there wasn't any humidity in the air that day, and the old fashion heater next to the toilet. It was a perfect moment, when everything was right. The house seemed otherworldly to me, having lived in a state of poverty up until this point, and for the first and last time I thought my parents and I would live together and be happy. None of it lasted, except that perfect moment. And other moments scattered throughout my life have joined it in the back of my mind subconsciously driving me.

While in Sicily, Jeremiah said something that stuck with me. He said, "I have been painting for years and years trying to capture what was probably 30 minutes in my grandmother's house when I was a kid."

Here I think I'll step aside to say that all these individuals I speak of with reverence I recognize as flawed, sometimes terribly flawed, human beings. Please don't take me for one to over romanticize. It is the passion, the company, and a vision I crave for, not the flaws of their lifestyles whether its suicide, drinking, drug abuse, misogyny, infidelity, or any other negative trait that can be dug up.

So earlier tonight, while riding in the car with my father, I thought about all my heroes. I told my father "I don't think artist really believe the abstract expressionist existed." There was a pause and then I asked him if he knew what I meant. He did. And what I meant was that people don't believe in perseverance and brute honesty. Rothko gave up a commission for the current equivalent of 2 million dollars on principle. In the world I want to go into, where business men and women treat your hard work and passion as home decoration, where they bargain for low prices like its a game and it is to them but its food on the table for you, where you are almost always amongst the poorest people at your own opening, a man like Rothko is my hero. The same goes for de Kooning who didn't have his first show until he was 40. What drove them was love and passion for what they do.

So I confronted my father about his own pessimism and his criticism of my idealism and overconfidence. I do get arrogant at times I know but I do it to keep myself looking forward. Sometimes my father makes me feel like I ought to apologies for being so foolish as to pursue something I believe in. He believes in it too, I know he does, but perhaps it’s hard to believe in someone else when your 50 and are having a difficult time believing in yourself. The conversation did not go far. It was barely a conversation. It ended up just another one of Miguel's attempts to take a stab at his father. There was a shorter pause this time and then I told him how I wanted to be like Bob Dylan and find my Greenwich Village and be a member of a heroic group like he so often labels his heroes the abstract expressionist. I told my dad that sometimes I hated being home, because I want to be surrounded by passionate people. He didn't respond.

And I suppose I just get tired of double standards. How can he or we for that matter believe in the great acts of people in the past and this is more than just painting, or songwriting, but in every aspect of humanity when we are so quick to deny the possibility of ourselves or anyone else in our life from doing something that matters. This could be from Martin Luther King and Gandhi to volunteering to join the neighborhood cleanup or driving a fuel efficient vehicle or for Christ sake riding a bicycle. And speaking of neighborhood cleanups, for all the self righteous politically minded young adults in Richmond who recognize the corruption and failings of our city's pathetic government, how come none of them joined the handful of us that went through the alleys picking up all sorts of garbage? And speaking of our shity city, why the hell isn't there anywhere to recycle where I live?

So as I sat with my dad in the car I had this verse from Bob Dylan's "Song to Woody" in my head:

Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along.
Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn,
It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born.

I feel like he was singing about this world, a world where all the places where we can reground ourselves in our humanity are being taken away. With all this said I feel like I have put quite a bit of pressure on myself. It's tough when you remember your own opinions sometimes. So, is there anything to be done? I think so. And I am promising to myself this very moment that I will do what I can as an artist and will try not to waste time worrying about things like wealth and recognition (well at least more than the requirement for a modest lifestyle although a great deal of recognition is fine with me, I just don't want it to be my goal). I am also promising myself to work in other aspects of my life and try harder to be more conscious of my actions. I am promising myself that I will be brave enough to go for it, if I ever find my Greenwich Village. And finally I am promising myself that if I have failures at accomplishing these goals, which I more than likely will, I will forgive myself and not get so down on myself that I can't get up again.

2007-07-16T00:30:00.000-04:00

I've started running every morning. I've started doing small studies outside in oil despite the disconfort and inconvieniance of painting outside because I know that doing it will make me a better painter. I've started learning to play beatles songs on guitar and even try and sing a bit although I'm not very good yet but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try. I've started to write songs with Sean again too and I'm glad were once again good friends and collaborators. I've started to read again and right now I'm working on a call to arms which I am really enjoying. I've started to visit relatives after puting it off for months and months and months and have mended some bridges. I've basically started doing the things I knew I wanted to do, but didn't know I could do. I'm sick of misery and depression. I'm sick of being lazy and waiting for convieniance. I'm sick of being surrounded by those who do the same. I have so many people who love and support me. As of last night I can now remember what I believe in. I'm ready make things happen. I'm ready to live a better life.

I would like to share these quotes I like a lot:

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

-Emerson

Meghan Makes the World A Better Place

2007-07-10T12:44:00.000-04:00

I had been counting down the days till Meghan arrived. I was so excited. It made the summer tolerable and it was all I thought about in the week preceeding her arrival. I'd tell lewis 5 more days till Meg is here while he was working up on a latter while we were repairing a huge piece of rotted wood up above the entrance of exchange alley (a building shared by various businesses in shocko bottom). I told him I'd be taking the next two weeks off to spend time with her.

When the day came I arrived at the train station a good forty minutes or so early. I was so damn antsy. I noticed the people stairing at me as I sat right by the gate instead of in a confortable chair and jumped to my feet every time a train went by. All the false alarms were warn graffiti covered cargo trains (one of which strangely had a portrait of a blone woman that was prety nice on the side) with CSX writen on the side, so I knew it was her when I saw the sleak exterior of an Amtrak passenger train. I watched the passengers come out a few at a time until finally i saw the tiny girl with red hair and a black jacket luging around bags that probably equaled her in weight. I knew it was her and stood watching her come first across my plain of sight from right to left till we were lined up, and then closer. Her pace didn't quicken or slow down even when she finally got immediately in front of me. It all lead with indivisible transition into her pushing her neck forward to kiss me and it felt strange and awkward in that it had been a long time since either of I had kissed, and at the same time conforting. It was like saying its over now, relax, reaquaint yourself, make yourself at home. I was in disbelief. It was really her soft face pressed against mine. She felt otherwordly because there was nothing in my life that smelled like her or fit like her in my arms. Femininity can be so alien and has the inherant ability to transcend above the conflict between myself and all the other objects in my life and I hope it never loses that. There is truly nothing else like being close to someone you love. I am amazed at how I could be myself and feel like someone comepletely different when passing back and forth between Connecticut and Virginia, while passing back and forth between being with her and without her. The awkwardness of kissing her was the awkwardness of remembering who I had been. I love her so much.

Soon after our greeting she told me she was not feeling well. We drove from the trainstation, through the city, stoped by Frans house to say hi because it was convieniantly along the way, picked up my dad at the apartment, and headed out to my grandparents. I liked seeing Meghan in envirornments so domestic to me. They were better places with her in them. We watched a special on Caravagio on PBS and then headed for bed. She wasn't very talkative still feeling sick. We laid around, talked, and kissed in the guest room. We couldn't spend the night together, being my grandparents house so i made plans to wake up and sneak out with her in the middle of the night. We woke up later and laid down in my bed, which was down the hall but never followed through with the plan. It was just as well. She was exhausted.

My memory is hazey as to what immediately followed. I think the drive out to Pat's families' lake house was next. We picked up Fran. It was a tight squeeze in the cab of the truck. I brought my computer to listen to music but the damn cigarette lighter was burned out and I needed it for the charger. I put a lot of energy into geting all the plugs and stuff necessary too so I was dissapointed. The radio sucks. The drive was very long but conversation kept it moving along at a confortable pace. After a few hours we were surrounded by farm land on rolling hills and I was surprised we were still in Virginia.

We had trouble finding Pat's address so he walked to the top of the steep driveway. It was scary how steep it was. He hoped in the back, told me to put the truck in a lower gear, and we rolled down slowly. He told us how his parents bought the property and they spent a long long time building it. When we made it to the bottom I looking forwards and was shocked at how gorgous the place was. It was all dark wood, surrounded by tall trees, and siloueted by the light reflecting off the green lake beyond it.

I couldn't wait to go swimming.

(I'll Update this Post periodically until it is comeplete)

Couldn't Fool Myself

2007-06-20T21:42:00.000-04:00

I've been ruining my summer over those damn Sicily paintings. The 5th one, which is a painting of the fish market has been the bigest source of anxiety. I have been depressed since I've gotten home and those paintings felt more like a trap than an expression or liberation. But I was locked in to doing them. I couldn't see clearly enough to know that it didn't have to be this way. Finally today I just sat and looked at the painting. I realized that this was not what Sicily meant to me. A few days earlier I felt this painful emptiness where I longed to be on that trip again. I wished I had taken the time to get closer to my classmates. I wish I had gone out more. I wish I spent less time in my head and more time simply experiencing Sicily. I knew that I could use this pain to help bring me back and find inspiration to do the paintings again. I started fliping through photographs trying to remember it. Memories started flooding in and suddenly I could recall these intense moments. I could even remember moments where I thought I need to paint this but would later put aside. I thought I was being honest but now I realize that I had been fooling myself and only half believed in what I was doing. Now my mind has cleared and I am starting fresh and new. The fish market has been covered in white paint. The content of it I have not thrown away but choose to paint it in a very difference context and composition. One more honest to what I imagined there. And for the series Ill paint this lone fisherman I saw going out at sunrise in Castellammare del Golfo. Everything feels much better now and I for the first time in a long time have more ideas than canvases.

Blue

2007-06-20T19:53:00.000-04:00

Yesterday my father finally took me up on a challenge I had posed for quite some time. He did his first blue painting in ages. I had grown weary and detached from my fathers red or muted grey paintings not because they weren't excellent but because it only hit me in a place that was intelectual. I knew my fathers language clear now. Over the past few years obscurity and spacial relationships between various elements in the work have come to the forfront replacing geometric design. He has done this in a way that gives the work more of an iritant. He'd often compare it to the off notes that telenious monk clunks, or Monks way of holding that negative space till the rythm is just about to be lost and bang. It's abrasive but moving. All of this has gotten progressively stronger but the color has remained fairly constant with the exception of little tiny bits of green here and there. The work was good but I still felt like it was the contemplation that moved me but it was an intelectual movement not an emotional one. So he told me he'd do a painting that was blue but keep the same language as before and by the end of the day he envited me over to the studio to see it.

I was in awe when I saw it. My heart sunk low in my chest. None of my fathers work had ever struck a chord so deep with me. Infact little of the art I've seen my entire life has. I moved in close to it and it began to make me remember this pool in blacksburg virginia. Atleast thats where I thought it was. It was the first time I ever went off the diving board. I would have been 5 and my father and I had just become aquainted with one another. It's a pretty wonderful memory. Dense with emotions. The painting took me back to it. I asked my dad the title and he said Night Swim after the song Nightswimming. He chose the song because of the nostalgic lyrics. It's amazing how we both were thinking about pools and on top of that naming the painting after a REM song really struck me because REM was always on when I first started hanging out at my dad's studio when I was little. Swimming pools were a big part of my childhood too. So swimming pools and memories were on both our minds and it's funny that an abstraction can inspire such a similar experience.

The painting itself after closer inspection I realized aluded to diving boards and lane lines in their forms and patterning. I told my dad and he said that de Kooning said there were no pure forms. All forms have a psychological implication. I like that. The painting is beautiful. I told my dad that I felt it was as Jeremiah would say 100 percent not just 80 because many artist make it to 80 but its the ones who get that last 20 percent that really seem to transcend. This painting did that. Atleast for me. I told my dad I thought it was the best painting he has ever done and I stand by that. I told him it was as good as Deibenkorn. Just seemed like a reasonable equality to make.

It was difficult expressing to him just how great the painting was and it should be because its what can't be writen or said that makes a painting wonderful. I hope my father continues to shock and move me with his work. I just have no idea where he will go from here.

The Power of Art

2007-06-18T23:04:00.000-04:00

On PBS they are doing a special series called The Power of Art. It is created and hosted by Simon Schama. I've never heard of him but he's really good. Tonight was the first night. The first special was about Van Gogh. I found it to be deeply moving. I had no idea he was as noble a human being as he was. I knew that he worked hard despite his inability to sell a single painting but I had no idea he did a painting just about ever day if not two or three. His work also expressed an emphasis on life that captured how sublime and clear and rich and juicy his moments of clarity are and how wild and turbulent, and at the same time the struggle to hold on to it in the brush stroke as he is trying desperately to delay his next collapse into depression and psychotic episodes. One of the clearest examples of this was his last self portrait.

During the program Simon Schama quoted Van Gogh saying that the work was an extempt to express calmness. He then went into the swirling lines in the background and the sense of turbulance. It seemed contradictory to calmness. If anything the marks better represent his personal demons. But the colors are calming which keeps the work from being morbid. And although everything is rushing around in thick swirling brush strokes van gogh's eyes remain solid peering out rationaly. It made me think of a captain in a sea battle looking out onto the ocean during a battle staying level headed even when chaos is on all sides of him. There is a hopefulness to it.

I found it so relatable. This longing to engage with life and hold on. I realized how lost I felt. I have felt numb and discouraged and depressed lately. I havent been able to get any sense of satisfaction or acomplishment in the studio, or in music or philosophy for that mater. Self doubt is setting in. Just yesterday I felt like droping out would be a fine idea because there was no way i could ever acomplish anything. I wouldn't look for a job after that or anything. Just kinda fade into nothingness. I felt like there really wasn't anything to life anymore. Its flat and over and I couldn't project any kind of future for myself.

This documentary of Van Gogh has made me aware once again of how deep life runs and just how much i have to saturate myself in it. I just can't find my way in. I don't know myself anymore and this guy ive gotten acustomed to I'm sick of. I live on the surface of my life and when I look at it I can't see anything beyond just a surface in myself. No wonder I thought to myself theres nothing much to life anymore.

But now I have hope that there will be some sort of break. I'll regain my grip and climb on in. When In a state of depression when I was 14 I managed to get back to that place through painting. It was wonderful to just all of a sudden feel incredible after feeling muted and lost for so long (and why I decided to be a painter). Back then I was naive and that was on my side. I was uninhibited and just let the emotions flow right on out.

But I have things in the way now. I need to get all the voices out of my head. I need to stop worying about what my dad thinks, or how Julie said "I like it, its just your painting wasn't you." That infuriated me. Who the hell is anyone to tell me who I am. I'm sick of geting little to no feedback just because I don't always do whats expected of me. I feel like I'm in a perpetualy repressing my interest. Earlier today I remembered how I wanted to learn to play violin when I was little but I never told my parents because it was a white thing to do. My mom has been geting harassed for not being "black enough." I don't have any more time to waste worying about what other people think and know that as long as I do I'll never get re-engaged with life.

I need to get back to that moment when I was five and my father gave me my first art book on Picasso. It was so clear then. I could feel the power of the paintings in the book. I haven't felt for months and really need to stop and let go of my inhibitions.

But with these damn paintings from Sicily I still haven't finished for school I am stuck just going through the motions. I am hoping I can breathe some life into them, meditate on the emptiness I feel when I think of Sicily to remember why it matters to me, atleast enough to get through them. It will be good practice making life and art one and the same, and once thats done, I'm free.

I'm grateful to Van Gogh now and would like to end this with a few quotes of his:

"I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."

"The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting."

"I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say 'he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.'"

"It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures."

(I got these quotes from http://www.artquotes.net/masters/vangogh_quotes.htm)

2007-06-17T16:21:00.000-04:00

I've made some progress in the Sicily paintings. It is amazing how one thing can rule your entire summer. I have to say It feels like summer hasnt even started and won't start till these paintings are done.

The Naked Art Show

2007-06-02T10:45:00.000-04:00

I went to first friday with Margaret last week. There were atleast 1000 people walking up and down the street. It was exciting to see people coming out for the arts. When I was little there would be no one but those involved in the arts at the openings. Now there are streat performers and everything. It is pretty exciting.

Margaret and I went to Gallery 5 to see there "Disrobed 2" show. I had seen photos of the last show and was prety curious. It is an exhibit of nude men and women covered in body paint posed in various stances on sets. There was a long line flowing outside of the gallery. Margaret and I talked for a while until we got to the front where they asked for our I.D. and 5 dollars. Jackson apeared out of nowhere as I was pulling out my wallet. It was exciting to see him. We are both painting portraits of one another at the moment and its cool to have a fellow artist around. He told me that he was just in there with my dad and that I probably wouldn't be into the work that much.

Initially when I got inside he was right. I forgot that naked people don't startle me anymore so shock value was gone. Margaret wasn't too shocked either. I thought it would turn out to be pretty lame but while standing in the largest exhibit, a set divided into an industrial world and a nature world full of figures painted acording to their envirornment (such as adam ane ever, the tree of knowledge, and a man holding a turtle on the nature side and people painted up silver and red and stuff on the industrial side). We stood there stairing a long time and noticed how the various models interacted with the audience differently. One girl purposefully posed in provokative poses (but by no means explicit) and didn't hesitate to make eye contact with whoever was looking at her. It was a bit intense and reminded me of Inges' Grand Odalisque. Margaret and I began to really zone out and get into the exhibit when suddenly I looked over and saw this little old woman.

She was huttled in the corner, all frail, with her green blouse, curly brown grey hair, and blue eyes. Her features seemed to hang on her face but there was something youthful about her eyes like an ashamed child. She looked down at the floor and away from the figures. I watched her as all these youthful college students all about a foot taller than her huttled with their backs to her. She looked so alienated. It was heartbreaking. I could no longer think about the nude figures. All I could think about was that little old lady in the corner. I kept saying to myself "why is she here?" After a little while she left. I had no idea what she was waiting for and why she stood there so long if it made her so unconfortable. My heart still sinks when I think about her.

Later that night we went back to the apartment and watched hollywood land with my dad. I won't talk about it other than it was really good. If your reading this please please please go rent it.

Later that night Margaret and I went to the 4th street diner. I felt so in my zone. Late night diner full of strange faces. Margins of society and all that stuff. There was the incredibly interesting looking waitress who reminded me of Mena Suvari. She was wearing a white shirt with spagetti straps that allowed you too see the top of her tatoos on her back. I think they were black wings She was so thin except her pregnant belly. Two of the models from the disrobed show were there too. The woman still painted all red with a yellow robe around her and her boyfriend painted all white with a painted chain across his body in a blue jeans jacket and jearns. There was a variety of bums and rednecks too. Margaret and I just sat there siping coffee and talking about our history. How we overcame the awkwardness of my having crushed on her when I was 16 and the hypocracy of all my friends who gave me crap for it. It was good times. I'd love to hang out there again at 2 in the morning again. Next time I'll bring a sketch book and a black pen.

I drove Margaret home afterwards. It was a long drive. It was a good night.

Happy Birthday Richmond

2007-05-26T22:06:00.000-04:00

I just got back from the fire works show which celebrated Richmonds 400th birthday. I saw the show from up on the flood wall overlooking the river with my dad and grandparents. We were woried that the southern states building would block the view but luckily the fireworks were to the right of it due to the bend of the river. There were people everywhere. It was odd seeing the city alive. Everytime I come back from Hartford its like coming back to a better city than the one I grew up in. I love seeing that many people. Its enough to make me momentarily feel like a part of a community. There was this man standing in front of me holding his daughter. Their silouette in front of the fireworks was prety beautiful.

And it was an apropriate day for this fireworks show because I (for the first time since I've been home) felt like I didn't have this city today. It may be due to the fact that I spent lots of time at the studio painting. I have half a mind to go back there right now and keep working. I started one new still life and finished an older painting form the sicily trip. I'm back in the zone. The need to paint is pumpin through me.

So all in all it's been a good day. I'm looking forward to tommorow.

My Enemy

2007-05-26T00:48:00.000-04:00

I'm siting here, feeling fairly unacomplished watching mindless telivision at 1 in the morning that I take little to no satisfaction in whatsoever. I just want it to be tommorow. I hate nights like this. I could have been drawing, reading, writing, practicing guitar, or even better sleeping! for the past few hours. But oh no I sit and sulk. I don't even realize I'm doing it until too much time passes. And now I wonder what keeps me siting here like this when I have so much I wish I could do. I think its some sort of desperation. I'm emotionaly numb and sit waiting for something to happen. Anything that isn't mundane and dull. I don't go to sleep for fear that something worthwhile could happen even when I know that it will cause me to sleep in late and miss out on time I really could be doing things in the morning. I need to get my shit together. I really don't like myself right now.

Facing Another Summer

2007-05-08T21:35:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about updating this blog. It's been a long time. I started re-reading things i wrote months ago which I never published. I never plan on it either. I guess I just keep them there as personal reminders. They remind me of who I've been. And it is amazing how much someone can change in a year. Last summer was so hard for me. It seemed to go on forever at times. It was lonely and alienating to point of being sickening at times, and at other times it was so damn romantic and full of painting and music and poetry. Now I can't believe I'm already facing another one. I can't believe all the things I've done either. This summer I want Meghan to come visit me. I want to take her down to North Carolina to see the beach, and Ashville, my mom's house, and ofcourse I'll take her to every awesome place I know of at home in Virginia. I want it to be amazing like it was during spring break at her house. I want an adventure. And It's funny because just last night I mentioned to Sydney how I don't know how to recreate those really amazing days. I don't know how to describe them. They are just perfect in the sense that you feel full and satisfied and in place. They usually go on forever too. I said that I wish I could relive some days somehow. Maybe if I did I could find some sort of clue as to what makes a transcendental moment, what makes life run deep and heavy with so much happiness. Earlier today I was reading William James and he mentioned how no two thoughts are ever the same. I agree with him. I just think of those days as those thoughts. Unrepeatable but easily categorized as a certain sensation. Funny how it fits.

And a lot has been fiting together lately. I will try hard to get it all out, but as for right now, I must work on my final.

Learning from the Native Community

2007-03-11T14:49:00.000-04:00

This is another paper I wrote for one of den Ouden's classes. I learned a lot writing this paper about ways in which we can improve as a community. It opened my eyes to new ways of defining a community and I would like to share it.

Miguel Carter-Fisher
denOuden
Native American Philosophy

Learning from the Native Community

The most obvious place where the west can learn from the Native Americans is our attitude towards the community. Here in the United States we put such a strong emphasis on our own personal entitlements that we lose sight and compassion in regards to the community as a whole. There are efforts towards helping out various subcultures within the whole but this is not enough. There is no reason to ever look at another human being no matter what their ethnic background may be and see them as being less of a human than yourself. Now I am not accusing people of being prejudice so much as I'm trying to point out the implications of limiting your community to those who are "like" yourself whether it be through family, heritage, economics, or any other way of dividing people. If we are ever going to truly utilize the vast array of talents, cultures, and knowledge we have here in American we have to adopt a philosophy that works towards the benefit of all people. The clearest example of this problem that I can think of is an experience I had right after September 11. A girl in my class stated that she didn't really care about the terrorist attack or the casualties because she didn't know anyone who could have been hurt. Her and some other students proceeded to joke and make light of the situation. I've never felt so disgusted. Sometimes I feel like we are breeding a nation of sociopaths. Native American philosophy may give us a fresh perspective on how we can become a greater community by taking values specific to their culture and applying them to the whole of our own.

In Gregory Cajete's book Native Science he states that Individuals in a Native community are conditioned towards having a successful relationship with their community and each individual is found through the expression of the community as a whole (Cajete 86). Relationships are the cornerstone of the tribal community, and the identity of that tribe is their expression. Through their community Native people come to understand their personhood and the communal soul of the people. He also states, and I very much like this, that "In the most basic sense, culture is the way in which a group of people have come to relate to a place and its natural process" (Cajete 90). Language, religion, art, technology, laws, ethics, values, forms of education, and other institutions all serve their own expression in the community. Cajete says that in this context, "the medium is the message." "In other words," he continues, "at conscious and unconscious levels, the community is each of us no matter who, when or where we are." He then concludes that it is communities not civilizations that are the enduring human system (Cajete 91). The way the Pueblo Indians have maintained a great portion of their culture despite the rule of the Spanish, Mexicans, and United States is proof of this.

With all this said I would like to bring up America's cultural mediums. We have television, computers, film, music, international business, corporations, wars, and many other widespread means of influencing the global community. Because of this we can no longer maintain a responsible policy in how we treat other human beings while continuing to limit our communities to the criteria of early tribal communities. And even in that I am being generous because I feel that at-least in the context of the Pueblo Indians Americans have an even stricter criteria for who and what they can relate to.

Our Capitalism and marketing is doing a spectacular job of contributing to our condition of wide open consumption, wide open development, wide open technology, and narrow perspectives. Bob Dylan expresses this conflict well with the lines, "Advertising signs that con you into thinking you're the one, that can do what's never been done, that can win what's never been won, meantime life outside goes on all around you." Since 1964 when those lyrics were first publicly heard the situation has not improved. Advertising thrives on alienation and segregation. As long as people feel that culture is something to be subjected to, rather than themselves expressed through the community as Cajete states, people will continuously be taken advantage of. We have not developed a moral standard that matches our technology and power.

Some Key factors of tribal people in Cajete's book are environment, guidance, kinship, diversity, special status, ethical models, clear roles, customs and practices, recognition, unique ways of learning, and community work (Cajete 95-97). All of these values would greatly benefit us here in America. I will not go into all of these issues but I will cover a few.

One I would like to point out is diversity in Cajete's sense of the word. He stats that "In the close-knit, interdependent community, children were exposed to people of all ages, married and single, as well as varied personalities, the handicapped, and the "contraries." Children interacted with all types of people on a daily basis in the course of living in community. (Cajete 96)" This would be such a beneficial practice. Who you are exposed to and what you are told about people as a child plays a crucial role in your ability to comfortably relate to individuals later on in life. I know to this day I have problems interacting with people that remind me of negative childhood experiences such as being harassed by black kids who didn't understand my complexion, or being asked how I got so tan at a predominately white swimming pool. Such experiences could easily fall into prejudices if not countered with positive experiences. My cousin Virginia for example, who has red hair and freckles, cried when she was told that my best friend Calvet who is black with a dark complexion was not her cousin too. It is amazing how easily children can get past barriers like that if allowed to.

On the topic of guidance, Cajete states that "All adults were considered teachers and any adult could guide, discipline, or otherwise play a direct role in educating a child." This is a much more honest way of looking at one's relationship to his teachers. The idea that we only learn from our parents and from school is a complete lie. Children, and adults for that matter, do not turn learning on and off according to circumstance. A teacher is not solely responsible for a child's education as well. We objectify and specialize our roles here in America to the point that it ignores our full capacity to have a strong positive impact on others, relate outside of our fields, and most importantly work together through compassion and empathy towards the benefit of the whole. Specialization has given us a surplus in resources that allows for past times such as philosophy and the arts, but what good is it if pushed to the point that humanity and commonality is lost as well.

Another issue that is tiresome to me now concerning guidance is this silly idea that because I am now past 18 I am completely independent and should be able to make the right decisions for myself without help. It is exhausting and very confining and discouraging to be in a situation where you feel like you can't turn to anyone. We all need guidance at all stages of our lives. This ties into the next topic which is ethical models.

One problem I have here on campus is how separated I am from various age groups. I am lucky enough to find role models in some of the faculty but have no one to be a role model to. While this can feel liberating at first it eventually encourages one to loose sight of why they are in school to begin with. I know that I often don't think of the sacrifice my family made for me to be here and sometimes it is for the best considering I am already very hard on myself. The only good advice I ever got when leaving for college was "remember why you are there." I tell myself that whenever I start to get distracted from the noble ambitions I came here to pursue. I want to make a difference in my community and refuse to let the media, the school, my peers, my faculty, or even those with power in the fields I am pursuing make me feel insignificant or small. And this is not out of arrogance, it is out of responsibility.

I would like to share with you a bit about a friend who has been a role model to me. His name is Mattej and he is also attending Hartford Art School. His family went through even great sacrifices not just to get him in school but to get him to America, being from Sylvakia. He works hard and feels a great responsibility to himself, his work, his family, and his friends. He is very admirable because of this and already has come into conflict with American attitudes. Many of his peers, particularly those who are not in the art school, give him a very hard time about his focus and drive to work. They don't understand why he can't feel comfortable with just getting by. In the art school he is taking graphic design and feels at odds with the faculty because he thinks that advertising should carry with it the responsibility and expression that fine art should have (I say should have because fine art is becoming more like commercial art). He has been repeatedly been accused of asking too much of his audience. I have told him that to go into design with his ambitions and moral standpoint is to go against a very dense grain. I have learned though that he is not alone in how he feels about design (despite the popular belief which is for the most part valid that many kids go into graphic design because they want to make money). There are people going into it with passion and I think that perhaps they can remedy some of the issues earlier stated about the American mediums of expression, how they have great power, and little responsibility. Although Mattej is not knowledgeable of Native American culture, he does embody many of the values that Cajete insists upon, which goes to show that these values are inherent and adaptable by us Americans as well.

In conclusion it must be stated that the positive changes we can have concerning our responsibility towards our community starts at home. Ultimately we have to grow up as far as our international policy goes but to get there we need citizens who are taught that maturity in small communities such as the home and school. Saying this may appear contradictory to my earlier definition of the American community, but it is not. As a person is both an individual and a member of his family, community is both it's own and a part of a larger community. A balance needs to be maintained and this requires some self sacrifice and some defiance. Ultimately what needs to be learned here in America is that we are not subjects of the community, we are the community, and it is time we started taking care of ourselves.

Cajete, Gregory. Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Clear Light Publishers, 2000

While Listening to Neil Young

2007-03-11T13:46:00.000-04:00

I've been procrastinating here for the past couple hours playing Neil Young songs on my guitar. After a while playing and singing them becomes puts me in such a great mindset. I picked up my harmonica and played along to After the Gold Rush and Helpless and soon realized that I wanted more of his music. So i started listening to music samples from various albums on itunes and came across some reviews for his music videos from the new album Living With War.

The first couple of reviews were supportive and comented on how people need to start concerning themselves with the envirornment. The next was a boast of comeplete apathy. And the last three were some idiots ranting about how itunes needs to get this liberal bullshit off and yada yada. One reviewer particularly pissed me off. I read more of his reviews which included statements like "in 50 years George Bush will be remmebered as one of the greatest presidents of all time." Jeus Christ, when I think of the pool of ignorence people bathe themselves in it churns my stomach and I want to vomit.

Now I'm thinking about this campus and everyone I ever knew who "doesn't care" because "it has nothing to do with me." People are so disgusting. No, I can't even call them people, because to boast of one's apathy is to be inhuman. Where do these fools come from?

To not grow, change, and concern yourself with whats happening in the world is to remain irresponsible. Now I've been told many times that neo conservatives and bible pushin' bigots arn't all horrible people, but as of recently I've chosen to see the individual as the role one takes in his community, and the role they take is a harmful one. So maybe Bush is a good father, or a loyal husband, or donates to his church, or whatever positive thing that people can relate to. It doesn't change a god damn thing. I feel as though someone with enough power could kill thousands in another country, but so long as they make it to church on sunday, there will always be support of them here in America.

And so I'm glad Neil Young is writing his anti war songs. And since when has politics been a topic that we are not supposed to have opinions on in the arts, literature, and music. It is the puritan tradition burried deep down in America that chooses to project its materialism on all we do, not realizing that our actions can elevate the spirit. God is not a book. And who the hell is anyone to tell someone what they should and shouldn't be writing about. We treat our opinions as posessions and once we have an opinion of someone else we want to posess them too. It's pathetic.

Neil Young is absolutely fantastic. He is sincere and in doing so has more dignity than any of these losers that I see here on MtvU. When I play his songs I recognize the modesty in it. I am amazed at how simple it all is. It is confined and focused and within those confinements true creativity flourishes. Moreso than the endless dribble of jam bands at bonaroo (I'm so fucking sick of hippydom and all it's hypocracy), or the overproduction of well just about everything. I hear so many complaints and see so little difference. Everytime I hear about some new band that suposedly so creative and so honest and real, its a god damn dissapointment. I'm so damn sick of everything being subjective to this god damn thing we can't even see. And it doesn't even have anything to do with corporate versus independent anymore for me. It runs much deeper than that now. It runs to the foundation of how we Americans see ourselves. I think we feel entitled to everything but meaning in our lives. Soon we have to realize that we are the community. We make our culture here and now. When they try to spoonfeed you spit it out. If you don't support it, then don't support it. Make sacrifices, make change.

Now I'm going to go do some homework, and when I come back, I'm going to learn some more Neil Young. Then some Bob Dylan, and Modest Mouse. Then I'm going to write some of my own songs maybe if I'm not too tired. Or another poem with Meg. In any case I will try to fully indulge myself in sincerity and as I told Meg last night, well make out to music, write poetry, go on romantic walks, be passionate, and won't apoligise for any of it. For me, being sincere is just saying, "I'm truly living."

2007-03-01T14:48:00.000-05:00

Wow Looking back over my blogs I suddenly see a clear fall into and then out of a state of depression. I hope I don't have to go through it agaain, atleast I just want to get through the rest of the semester happy. i should be happy. People should be happy. Sometimes it's hard to remember that it's important.

Fever

2007-03-01T14:13:00.000-05:00

I'm very sick right now, atleast have been all day. My back aches, my head is congested, and I feel weak. Oddly enough I am so incredibly happy and havent felt this happy in what feels like forever. It is a bit overwhelming.

Last night I had such an intense dream during my fever. The main body of my dream was me siting in a car in front of my old house on main street. I had about a thousand different things to take care of. I had paintings to do, papers to write, a guitar lesson. There was a girl in the backseat who at first tried to relieve me of stress but then detached and wouldnt respond when i asked her anything. Eventually I threw myself out of the car ran up the front steps of the house, went inside, and there was a wall I couldn't make it over in the middle of the staircase. I know why I dreamed this, but I won't share that because it involves my family and I wouldn't want to share their business. I yelled up the stairs dad I'm sorry, and he yelled back I'm sorry too, and then he wouldnt respond to anything I said.

After I woke up I started remembering things I thought I forgot like parks and civil war battlefields I went to with my little cousins where we played and how to speak a little spanish from high school (I woke up thinking ayuda me ayuda me yo estoy frio while chills from the fever ran up my body). I remembered these long steps coming out of the woods onto this flat plane of grass that led to a river, and sitting in a pattle boat with my grandpa, and the humidity and gold light on the river. I need to go camping again. I miss the feeling of adventure I used to have. I also thought about Kerry Sarah and I at the river and how I once loved her so much waking up in her room and how it smelled. I miss riding our bikes across the city in the hot sun sweat beading down our face. I have to get in touch with kerry. It has been such a long time. Basically I remembered all those days that didn't seem to end, like moving day with Sydney, where you can't ever find the words for what a good day it was.

Well since then I have been in this state of bliss. I feel sick but healthier than usual. It is strange. I was standing outside with Meg before going into the enfermery and i kissed her foredhead and smelled her hair and the breeze and the slush and snow in the street and It was like ah yes this is what I've been looking for. I'm back in that strange place I can never seem to find thats swells up in my belly and never leaves anything behind in the common reality. I don't know how else to put it. It's probably a combination of geting a full nights sleep, eating healthy and I don't know. I feel so optimistic.

This is what I'm Thinking About Right Now

2007-02-28T21:53:00.000-05:00

Antonio Lopez

I am so overwhelmed with school right now. I can't keep up with all my readings. I am just barely keeping up and when I start to fall behind or can't understand whats going on in class I start to regress into this mentality I had when I was little. It was a sort of I'm not as smart as other kids, and I'm not normal, and I can't get this who am I fooling kinda thing. I don't get it. I'm told I'm smart, I think I'm just thoughtful. I wish my knowledge was more well rounded. I'm told I am but I don't know that much about math or science. When I was little I was going to be a scientist of some sort. First it was paleontology that grabed my attention, and then I wanted to be an astronomer/astraunaut (all the while persuing a painting career on the side). Having said that I miss those days when my imagination ran wild and I thought I could do anything. Well I did till my math and science teachers had a talk with my parents about my poor performance, how I'm smart but never speak up, never do my homework, look miserable and won't eat the cafeteria food causing a lack of energy the later half the day and so on. By the time they were done I threw away my hopes of going to space. I wanted to be a video game illustrator for a long time. Then I went through a long long long depression (where I discovered radiohead and Pink Floyd) and when I thought their was no salvation for me i did a painting and I knew then and there that it's what I had to do.

Now I'm siting here thinking about how Stephen ripped apart my painting (which I thought was a huge leap forward for myself). He didn't do it out of cruelty but enthusiasm to help. I can't wait to study with him. Right now I'm tired, sick, and painting barely seems to matter, but if I could paint like Stephen or this artist he introduced me to named Antonio Lopez, I know that for atleast most the day I'd have that feeling of anythings possible. I know because just talking to Stephen did that for me today. Suddenly I could feel what it was like before becoming an artist was normal, when it was actually a concious decision, and the passion that flared in my gut for it.

I have grown increasingly aware of my mood swings. last night after an argument with Meg I told her that I would be cold, unaffectionate, mean spirited, and at the height of my wit which I would take pleasure in, but after I left would feel guilty and sad that I didn't tell her how much I cared about her. Then i said well lets just get it over with and we said goodnight and went to bed, I got to my room and sure enough my temper went away and I wanted to be with her. I hope that this feeling I have right now, of being overwhelmed, stupid, empty, and talentless will be the same. I hope that in the morning I'm as rejuvinated and in love with life as ever. I probably will be.

Prents and Phones

2007-02-12T23:26:00.000-05:00

My dad called and it made me happy. He was not rude and tired, or drunk. He payed attention to what I said. It was nice. It felt close to healthy. But my mom hasn't called me back and it has me worried. I was busy when she called before and only for another 15 minutes. It's like her to overreact and make me feel obligated to her when she feels weak. I told her to call me back at 10 because her number comes up as a private number so I couldnt call back. Maybe she was upset I didn't have the number. Oh well. She still could have called me, but I'm sure after all I've done for her I'm deserving of spitefulness. Seems like your there for somebody a long time and the one time your not you realize that they've either taken you for granted, or in my moms case villified you to being just another person there to let you down. I'm very familiar with the later, being very guilty of it myself. In any case I'm facing the familiar role of parenting the parents, and like always it leaves me woried about them, and angry that I always have to be.

Sudden Doubt

2007-02-12T20:11:00.000-05:00

Well the horrible painting I did went over well. Julie and I actually got some laughs out of it. Feels good being able to totaly fuck up at something and not feel humiliated or like it's the end of the world. Maybe this will help relieve me of expectations which I am sure are mostly projected upon myself. Then again, maybe I'm afraid to lose those projections. I don't rationaly believe that I should hole myself up the way I do but it's all I know. It's how I was raised.

I'm saying this in the midst of what feels like a depression brought on by my indecisiveness and general lack of goals. I don't project an idea of myself like I used to. I'm to aware of the fact that having a relationship means eventually breaking up, and that really eats away at me. I feel like there is too little time. On the positive side I'm slowly but surely making better use of my time and becoming a better rounded person (still feel like I have an impossible way to go). My intuition doesn't seem to be aiding me right now either. I don't have that sense of purpose or atleast that sense is not convieniant to me. It drives me crazy and I start feeling tested. It's a superstition in the back of my mind rooted in my constant piecing together of all the facits of life around me. I'm building towards something, I'm going somewhere, well atleast I have been. Now I feel doubt.

I have been reading Pierce in my American Philosophy class and acording to him doubt plays a significant role in how we achieve our beliefs. I wory that I have adopted "tenacity" as he would define it in my attitude towards myself. Maybe this break down I'm having will alow me to reconstruct myself to someone stronger and more capable. Maybe I'll just lose any sense of direction and see opportunity as it's own means and end. I just don't know whether it's healthier to strongly believe that your going towards a place you can't quite see where all opportunity leads, or to see opportunity as something carying you from place to place while you always remain still. Is there any such thing as destiny? and is it something we have to meet? or is it something painfuly unavoidable?

I am very stuned at how shaken I have become, and what good is my former conviction now? I can't get it back or atleast without some transition forward. And even then I don't know If I'll come back to the same resolve. Not to face my sudden doubts would be cowardice. So I'll go into whatever place I'm going, for however long, and however deep it takes to comeplete.

Let Me Take A Moment to Vent

2007-02-10T21:03:00.000-05:00

I god damn can't handle painting right now. It's so fucking frustrating. Particularly when we are expected to do something abstract. It's just a fucking free fall. Never have enough fucking structure to make anything worth while. And I keep trying to push forward and try new things but that takes time. I could do the same thing I've always done and have it finished in a few days but to go out on a fucking limb, making mistakes, teaching yourself as you go, and have everything done in the same timely fashion is impossible. I want to take a fucking knife to my painting right now. Then I want to punch something till my knuckles are bloody. It's always up and down up and down. A good day painting and I love the whole world and a bad day makes me want to blow it up. I hate that I can't get my dad out my head either. I always hear him taking about how student work always looks like student work and god dammit I want to do something better. But as long as I'm expected to just spit shit out like a fucking copy maching I can't. A bad day in the studio makes wanna curse my father. He is just this big fucking ominous thing constantly and condescendingly calling me tacky and pathetic but never with words because he never humiliated me with words. If ever he used words as a means to humiliate him I could use it later to my defense, and god knows I can't win an argument against him without examples. He's sorry now that he has placed himself as a burden on me, and I can't fucking shake him off. He is so damn good at painting and so fucking well adjusted it's nausiating at times. I'm sick of everything he has to say being valid and everything I have to say unworthy of response. I hate all the stupid social awkwardness', I hate all the stupid formalities and conversations. My name is Miguel you mother fuckers not Bill's son. I don't even like the gallery system which I'm damned to work through. I act like I don't care in class for 2 reasons. One is that I honestly don't give a shit if I'm a few minutes late because I needed some coffee, and the other is that if I was to fucking pour my heart and soul into it I'd have to be better prepared for failure. And when i fail I fucking crash because painting means more to me than it does to most people I know. I can barely function when a painting is left undone or screwed up. Right now I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't stand to be touched, I don't want to have fun because that would make me even more worthless because I'm not geting any work done, and I feel too fucking pissed off, insecure, and above all else inadequate to acomplish anything. I just want to destroy some shit. Everything I can do I can do because I fucking learn. Natural talent is a god damn joke to me. Nights like this make me realize just how naturally mediocre I am.