July 29, 2009

  • Annals of Aesthetics:

    Lydian Mode

    In memory of composer
    George Russell, who
    died at 86 on Monday --

    Russell's thoughts on the Lydian mode
    strongly influenced Miles Davis,
    notably in Davis's "Kind of Blue."

    Cover, 'The Making of 'Kind of Blue''

    "The power of the Lydian mode,
      Russell realized, is
      freedom from time's restraints.
      The major scale is in a state of becoming.
      The Lydian scale already is."

    -- The Gravity Man, by Alice Dragoon,
        quoted at LydianChromaticConcept.com 

    Related material:

    "Field Dance," from the date of Russell's death.

    "The Tables of Time," from Nov. 13, 2003,
      and the four entries that preceded it.

    Today's previous entry     and
    The Reversible Diamond Puzzle
    (from St. Nicholas, November 1874)--

    The first crossword puzzle-- the 'Reversible Diamond Puzzle,' 1874

  • Church of the Forbidden Planet:

    Kaleideion

    Adam and God (Sistine Chapel), with Jungian Self-Symbol and Ojo de Dios (The Diamond Puzzle)

    Related material:

    "A great deal has been made of the fact that Forbidden Planet is essentially William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611) in an science-fiction setting. It is this that transforms Forbidden Planet into far more than a mere pulp science-fiction story" -- Richard Scheib

    Dialogue from Forbidden Planet --


    "... Which makes it a gilt-edged priority that one of us gets into that Krell lab and takes that brain boost."

    Dialogue from another story --

    "They thought they were doing a linear magnification, sort of putting me through a  magnifying glass."

    "Sizewise?"

    "Brainwise, but what they did was multiply me by myself into a quadratic."

    -- Psychoshop, by Bester and Zelazny, 1998 paperback, p. 7

    "... which would produce a special being-- by means of that 'cloned quadratic crap.' [P. 75] The proper term sounds something like 'Kaleideion'...."

    "So Adam is a Kaleideion?"

    She shook her head.

    "Not a Kaleideion. The Kaleideion...."

    -- Psychoshop, 1998 paperback, p. 85


    See also

    Changing Woman:

    "Kaleidoscope turning...

    Juliette Binoche in 'Blue'  The 24 2x2 Cullinane Kaleidoscope animated images

    Shifting pattern within   
    unalterable structure..."
    -- Roger Zelazny, Eye of Cat  

    "When life itself seems lunatic,
    who knows where madness lies?"

    -- For the source, see 
    Joyce's Nightmare Continues.

July 28, 2009

  • Annals of Harvard Symbology:

    Man and
    His Symbols 101

    Continued from July 21

    A headline from yesterday:

    US-China ties will shape
    21st century: Obama

    A headline from 2003,
    with an epiphany from
    twenty years ago:

    The Tables of Time

    JFK and chess at Chinatown picnic table

    Peace Rune
    Hexagram 11,
    Jan. 6, 1989

    Picnic Symbol 

    Picnic site symbol,
    British Sea Scouts

    In related news:

    Obama to hold picnic-table peace talk

  • Detective Story:

    Monumental
    Anniversary

    Four hundredth anniversary of the Sea Venture's shipwreck at Bermuda

    The Associated Press this morning --

    "Today's Highlight in History:

    On July 28, 1609, the English ship Sea Venture, commanded by Admiral Sir George Somers, ran ashore on Bermuda after nearly foundering at sea during a storm."

    "... the Sea Venture story is two tales in one. There's the hurricane at sea, and then there is the Bermuda wreck becoming an inspiration for 'The Tempest.' The first is one of the most dramatic adventures of the era, and the second is a fascinating detective story."

    Robert Sean Brazil, scholar --


    "It has been a commonplace in English literary criticism that Shakespeare’s play, 'The Tempest,' was modeled on these accounts.... However, this common wisdom is almost certainly a falsity. A monumental error."
    Related material:

    Plot summary by "Anonymous" at imdb.com of a feminist film version of "The Tempest" (now in post-production):

    "In Julie Taymor's version of 'The Tempest,' the gender of Prospero has been switched to Prospera. Going back to the 16th or 17th century, women practicing the magical arts of alchemy were often convicted of witchcraft."

    Taymor's "Tempest" stars, as Prospera, the famed portrayer of monarchs Helen Mirren. Another work dealing with alchemy suitable for Mirren (who is also known as Detective Inspector Jane Tennison):

    The Eight, by Katherine Neville, is perhaps the greatest bad novel of the twentieth century. If it were made into a movie, who should be cast as the Black Queen? ("...the dignified silver-haired woman danced sinuously..." -- p. 241)


    'Prime Suspect'-- Helen Mirren as Inspector Tennison

July 27, 2009

  • Requiem for a Choreographer:

    Field Dance

    The New York Times
    on June 17, 2007:

     Design Meets Dance,
    and Rules Are Broken

    Yesterday's evening entry was
    on the fictional sins of a fictional
    mathematician and also (via a link
    to St. Augustine's Day, 2006), on
    the geometry of the I Ching* --

    The eternal
    combined with
    the temporal:

    Circular arrangement of I Ching hexagrams based on Singer 63-cycle in the Galois field GF(64)

    The fictional mathematician's
    name, noted here (with the Augustine-
    I Ching link as a gloss) in yesterday's
    evening entry, was Summerfield.

    From the above Times article--
    "Summerspace," a work by
     choreographer Merce Cunningham
    and artist Robert Rauschenberg
    that offers a competing
     vision of summer:

    'Summerspace'-- Set by Rauschenberg, choreography by Cunningham

    Cunningham died last night.

    John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg in the 1960's

    From left, composer John Cage,
    choreographer Merce Cunningham,
    and artist Robert Rauschenberg
    in the 1960's

    "When shall we three meet again?"

    * Update of ca. 5:30 PM 7/27-- today's online New York Times (with added links)-- "The I Ching is the 'Book of Changes,' and Mr. Cunningham's choreography became an expression of the nature of change itself. He presented successive images without narrative sequence or psychological causation, and the audience was allowed to watch dance as one might watch successive events in a landscape or on a street corner."

July 26, 2009

July 25, 2009

July 24, 2009

July 23, 2009