Month: December 2005
-
Rhapsody in Indigo
or:
We are stardust,
We are golden,
continued1971:
1994:
Joni Mitchell, Turbulent Indigo"Some call them
'Emissaries from Heaven,'
others say the 'New Kids'
or even the
'Children of the New Earth.'
They are best known as
the Indigo Children...."
-- Brood Indigo
Children of the Damned (1963)(Set at
St. Dunstan-in-the-East Church,
London)Related material:
Shining Through
on
May 19, 2005,
St. Dunstan's Day--
This was the opening date for
the final episode of Star Wars. -
Expression
Expression is
an impossible word.
If you want to use it
I think you have to
explain it further...
-- Ad Reinhardt,
Art as Art"... an equation is a very
abstract expression
of knowledge
about something."
-- The Hidden Side
of VisualizationWell, yes.
For example:
Abstract Expression,
pixels on screen, 12/30/05
The Scope and Limits
of Quotation
(pdf), in
The Philosophy of
Donald Davidson,
ed. L. E. Hahn,
Open Court Publishers,
1999, pp. 691-714,by Dr. Ernest Lepore,
Rutgers University:"... an assumption I wish to reject, namely,
that in quotation an abstract expression (shape) is denoted....Since Davidson, however, only says 'we may take [an expression] to be an abstract
shape' [1979, p.85, my emphasis], his theory is compatible with expressions being
something else. We need only find something that can be instantiated by radically
differently shaped objects. Whatever it is must be such that written tokens, spoken tokens,
signed tokens, Braille tokens, Semaphore tokens, finger language tokens, and any other
way in which words can be produced, can be instantiated by it....Such entities might
exist; if they do, they might ultimately play some role in the
metaphysics of language." My emphasis.Reference:
Davidson, D., 1979, "Quotation," in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp.79-92.
For more on zero and other entities,
see Is Nothing Sacred?For more on Davidson,
see Shema.
-
Express
You've got to make him
Express himself
Hey, hey, hey, hey
-- Madonna
Related material on trains:
Davenport's Express
and End of Days.Related material on 162:
Dogma Part II: Amores Perros,
The Matthias Defense,
The Still Point and the Wheel,
Mark, and Confession.Related material on
self-expression:Wishmaster 3:
Beyond the
Gates of Hell,SciFi channel,
7 PM tonight
"This world is not conclusion;
a sequel stands beyond."
-- Emily Dickinson -
Parallel Lines
Meet at Infinity
From Log24,
Dec. 16, 2005:
From today's
New York Times,a man who died
(like Charlie Chaplin
and W. C. Fields)
on Christmas Day:
From Log24, Dec. 6, 2002,
Santa Versus the Volcano:Well if you want to ride
you gotta ride it like you find it.
Get your ticket at the station
of the Rock Island Line.-- Lonnie Donegan
(d. Nov. 3, 2002)
The Rock Island Line's namesake depot
in Rock Island, Illinois -
Dance of the Numbers
(continued)
The Pennsylvania lottery
on St. Stephen's Day--Midday: 105
Evening: 064From a new
branch of theology,
lottery hermeneutics:See Log24, 1/05,
Death and the Spirit,and the 64 hexagrams of
the box-style I Ching.From the Wikipedia
article on hermeneutics:
"One prominent theme which arises in contemporary philosophical hermeneutics (i.e., the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer) is a serious calling into question of scientism. Scientism
is the more or less unquestioned belief in the supremacy of the natural
sciences when it comes to serving as models of knowledge. By calling
scientism into question, hermeneutics is arguing for the legitimacy of
(among other things) aesthetic, literary, spiritual, and philosophical
knowledge, alongside (but not instead of) scientific knowledge."Amen.(See also Hitler's Still Point:
A Hate Speech for Harvard.) -
Language Game on
Boxing Day
In the box-style I Ching
Hexagram 34,
The Power of the Great,
is represented by
.Art is represented
by a box
(Hexagram 20,
Contemplation, View)
.And of course
great art
is represented by
an X in a box.
(Hexagram 2,
The Receptive)
."... as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually
in its stillness""... at the still point,
there the dance is."-- T. S. Eliot
A Jungian on this six-line figure:
"They are the same six lines that exist in the I Ching.... Now observe the square more closely:
four of the lines are of equal length, the other two are longer.... For
this reason symmetry cannot be statically produced and a dance results."
-- Marie-Louise von Franz,
Number and Time
For those who prefer
technology to poetry,
there is the Xbox 360.(Today is day 360 of 2005.)
-
Wren Day
"St. Stephen's Day [Dec. 26] is a national holiday in Ireland, but the celebrations have little connection to the Saint."
This day in Ireland is instead devoted to a barbaric ritual, "the hunting of the wren."
Let us therefore recall a more civilized figure-- St. Christopher Wren-- whose feast day is Feb. 25.
From Log24 on that date in 2005:
... Only by the form,
the pattern,Can words or music reach
The stillness, as
a Chinese jar stillMoves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin,
while the note lasts,Not that only, but
the co-existence,Or say that the end
precedes the beginning,And the end
and the beginning
were always thereBefore the beginning
and after the end.And all is always now.
-
Eight is a Gate
(continued)
Compare and contrast:
Click on pictures for details.
"... die Schönheit... [ist] die
richtige Übereinstimmung
der
Teile miteinander
und mit dem Ganzen.""Beauty is
the proper conformity
of the parts to one another
and to the whole."
-- Werner Heisenberg,
"Die Bedeutung des Schönen
in der exakten Naturwissenschaft,"
address delivered to the
Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts,
Munich, 9 Oct. 1970,
reprinted in
Heisenberg's Across the Frontiers,
translated by Peter Heath,
Harper & Row, 1974 -
Nine is a Vine
(continued)
The figures are:
A symbol of Apollo from
Balanchine's Birthday and
A Minature Rosetta Stone,a symbol of pure reason from
Visible Mathematics and
Analogical Train of Thought,a symbol of Venus from
Why Me? and
To Graves at the Winter Solstice,and, finally, a more
down-to-earth symbol,
adapted from a snowflake in
Those who prefer their
theological art on the scary side
may enjoy the
Christian Snowflake
link in the comments on
the "Logos" entry of
Orthodox Easter (May 1), 2005.
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