I could not say it better, so I’ll just pass along the thoughts of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world”. What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did […]
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Blog No. 64 “Art is Form Struggling to Wake from the Nightmare of Nature”
The title is a quote from Sexual Personae by Camile Paglia. Most photographers consider the words “natural” and “beauty” constant traveling companions. Its hard to imagine the images of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Eliot Porter and other great conservationist photographers as anything other than recorders of natural beauty. Think about this for a minute, however: […]
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Blog No. 63: Our reality comes into being because we ask it to
Our world is not the objective world, but the subjective world; we have no direct knowledge, only perceived knowledge. We have subjective knowledge in two forms, conscious and unconscious. Think of an alarm clock that wakes us from an unconscious state to a conscious one; we hear the alarm before we are conscious enough to […]
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Blog No. 62, Life Overflows the Vessels of Reason
Only when it was too late did I come to understand that the processes of life overflow the vessels of reason, that the most meaningful elements in human experience, sensitivity to beauty, devotion to one’s kind, are not matters to be determined by syllogisms. —Elisha ben Abuyah, from As a Driven Leaf Note that Elisha […]
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Blog No. 61, Art Must be Intolerant
In its own way, literature always was, is, and must be intolerant. And the clearer it is, the more intolerant it is—that is part of its nature. We can have lunch every day in the Writers’ Club with anyone we want, or go fishing with anyone we want. But the minute we begin turning a […]
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Blog No. 60, Eroica
If you have seen the BBC’s movie, Eroica, you should go to YouTube and watch it. In brief, it portrays the first public presentation of Beethoven’s new symphony at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz. The music itself is conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardner with a 23-piece orchestra using period instruments as it was originally […]
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Blog No. 59: The Immateriality of Art
I only rarely talk about my images in part because words are icons of ideas and ideas concern materiality unless used for special purposes; one must think of something. Art deals with the supernatural, as I recently discussed in these blogs. Even the poet uses words only esoterically, pointing to the supernatural experience of something. […]
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No. 58: The Necessity of True Myths
Moderns tend to think of myth as a false story told in ancient times to explain the workings of the natural world before we had science. Most cultures have a foundation myth that explains and legitimizes the culture. It also serves as a warning, there be dragons here! In other words, foundation myths point to […]
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Blog No. 57, The beast most innocent
–The beast most innocent That is so fabulous it never sleeps; If I can keep against all argument Such image of a snow white unicorn, Then as I pray it may for sanctuary Descend at last to me, And put into my hand its golden horn. From “I see a girl dragged by the wrists” […]
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Blog No. 67: “Julliard Open Studios,” the AP that keeps on giving
“Life is a unity: it would be very surprising if we could give fullest play to one of its functions while neglecting the other, or if to live our ideas should not help us to perceive them” A.G. Sertillanges, O.P., in The Intellectual Life, Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods I recently subscribed to “Julliard Open Studios” […]