Listening to Andrew Hill's Black Fire. Does anybody know what "cantarnos" means? I'm assuming it can be traced back to canto and canzone. But the Spanish dictionaries I've consulted come up empty. "Cantaro" however means jug. Perhaps my jug of song is empty?
[Update: Jonathan has the answer (in comments): "To sing to us."]
I really like Jonathan's 300 jazz albums series. Tonight, I've decided that what I mean by jazz is somehow marked (but not bounded) by Cannonball Adderly's Somethin' Else and Andrew Hill's Point of Departure. That's a rough gesture, of course. But it means that a song like "I'm Just a Lucky So and So", which I love and sing for my children before they go to sleep, isn't quite "jazz". What I'm saying is probably that when someone says "jazz", as in "I don't like jazz," or, "I love jazz," I assume they mean something that was recorded in the late 1950s or (especially) early 60s.
The worst story I ever heard about Jack Kennedy was that he sat on his boat one day eating chicken and threw the half-chewed bones into the sea.Norman Mailer (PP, p. 101)
The worst joke I ever heard Barry Obama tell was the one about Rahm Emanuel teaching poor kids how to swear. He didn't say it like that, of course. What he said was:
This whole myth of Rahm being this "tough guy" mean is just not true. At least once a week he spends time teaching profanity to underprivileged children.
And he really did put the word "profanity" in italics (watch the video). There was nowhere to go with the joke after he had used such a sanitized term for swearing. He delivered the two key facts in the wrong order. But my complaint is not about his knack for standup; it's about his sense of humour. The joke used "underprivileged" in the most patronizing way possible, i.e., as a simple backdrop for an act of charity. Hi guys, I just got off Airforce One ("it's niiiice!") and now I'm making a poor joke. But he didn't even have decency to call them poor. A poor joke, indeed. Then again, he was on TV, so what do you expect? But these are the things one was worried about.
Throwing a chicken bone into the sea is bad because it shows no feeling for the root of death, which is burial. Of course Kennedy might have muttered, "Sorry, old man," as he tossed the bone. That is the difficulty with anecdotes. One cannot determine the nuance. (PP, p. 102)
I don't know what Obama might have muttered to restore our hope in his nuances. But we'll be watching.
John Thune's ability to "put things very simply in perspective" is exemplary. Josh Marshall at TPM perceives an opening for some work across the aisle. I also have a somewhat modest proposal. A trillion may seem like a lot of money, but it's really only about 3500 dollars per American. Okay, that's a lot of money for some people and it wouldn't help the stagnant economy very much if the government just appropriated it. But the idea gets me thinking. A trillion is only a million million dollars and there are something like 10 million millionaires in the US. So if they each "gave" 100,000 dollars (i.e., if they were expropriated) you'd have the trillion right there. Of course that wouldn't be fair to those who just barely have a net worth of a million. That's fine. Just scale the program to net worth. So a billionaire would pay more than a mere multi-millionaire. These guys will probably earn it all back anyway by hook or crook, so the adjustment would be temporary, but at least the proverbial "taxpayer" won't get the bill. The reduced purchasing power, meanwhile, would only be felt in the "high-end" market, so it would be a truly progressive program. Alternatively, yes, Americans could just stack up their unemployed somewhere and eat their kids.
Literature teaches us what words mean,
how to use them.
Is that enough?
If we knew what all the words meant,
if we knew 'only' what words meant,
would that suffice?
Genius is established by insight, whereas wisdom sees through it all, even through the insight, and thus sees right through itself. The genius does not see through himself, has no insight into himself. (That is his particular sadness.) He is not freed from knowing, but is beholden to the knowledge he has gathered for himself.
The genius is not, of course, easily understood. He is often not understood at all. But the genius himself understands. He understands completely. He has become the tyrant of his own understanding. That is his knowledge.
Tyranny is established by conquest, whereas love conquers all, even the conquering, and thus itself. The tyrant does not conquer also himself, has no dominion over himself. (Will we grant the sadness of the tyrant?) He is not freed from power, but is beholden to the power he has gathered for himself.
The tyrant is not merely obeyed. Or rather, the tyrant is often not even obeyed. At bottom, it is the tyrant who obeys. Fully and completely obeys. He has become the genius of his own obedience. That is his power.
Tyranny is, let's say, a configuration of power, as genius is a configuration of knowledge. In both cases the configuration is oriented around a personality (the tyrant, the genius) who centers it.
There are other, less personal, ways to define a focus of knowledge and power. The touchstone of knowledge is truth, for example, while the touchstone of power is justice. Wisdom is a kind of absolute knowledge. And the only absolute power is, of course, love.
One might say: if my experience was all truth and wisdom, justice and love, how could the genius or the tyrant hold me in awe?
Genius is the takeover of knowledge by a strong personality. That personality may, of course, be one's own, but it is nonetheless a takeover, a knowledge-grab. (Just as the tyrant seizes power personally.) The genius renders truth and wisdom irrelevant, puts them out of the game. Genius is a way of knowing without respect for truth or wisdom. Could we perhaps say that genius does not transcend knowledge, that it remains immanent to the knowing it achieves?
But only if ... a big IF ... genius is like tyranny, homologous with it. Tyranny is power without respect for justice or love—power without decency. Is it not that tyranny fails to transcend power, that it remains immanent to the dominion it acquires?
And so there is a "tyrant of the intellect", i.e., a genius, as there is a "genius of volition", i.e., a tyrant.
Genius is to knowledge what tyranny is to power especially in their reception. The genius and the tyrant are celebrated in similar ways by "lesser" knowers and powers, i.e., minor scientists and politicians. We honour their "greatness" only by exposing our smallness.
All this is still a question. It is easier to accept this point in re the tyrant than the genius, isn't it? That's the whole point of the homologies.
It's an incomplete thought, but a homology just occured me. I could be wrong about this.
Genius is to knowledge as tyranny is to power. And, as we know, honesty is to knowledge as decency is to power. This could have interesting implications. One might be that honesty and decency are inversely proportionate to, respectively, genius and tyranny. Honesty and decency affect the conditions of possibility of knowledge and power.
You only need tyrants where there is no decency. You only become one if you have none. You only need geniuses where there is no honesty. You only become one if you have none. (Pause for thought.)
Whether in the society or the individual, genius is neither possible nor necessary under conditions of complete honesty. Likewise, tyranny is neither necessary nor possible under conditions of complete decency. The decent man cannot be and need not be a tyrant. Nor can the tyrant reach him. The honest man has no need to be a genius, nor can he ever become one. And the genius has nothing to teach him.
As we approach the twentieth anniversary of the Ayatollah's "valentine" to Salman Rushdie, I thought I'd note down two reflections on that affair that have given me pause.
The first is Noam Chomsky's very sharp comparison of the Rushdie affair to the trial of Ernst Zündel in Canada in 1988. He points out that while "everyone started screaming" when the fatwah was issued against Rushdie, no one said anything when a holocaust denier was sentenced to 15 months in prison by their own state for speaking his mind. (More precisely, Chomsky compares Zündel's sentence to the actions of that same state in holding The Satanic Verses back "for a couple of weeks" in customs.) Here's my favourite part of Chomsky's remarks on this:
You didn't have Susan Sontag getting up in public saying "I am Ernst Zundel," all this kind of thing. The point is, you defend freedom of speech when it's speech you like, and when you're sure there's a half-billion Western Europeans out there between you and the Ayatollah Khomeini so you can be courageous. (Understanding Power, p. 271-2)
The vaguely flarfy effort I posted on Sunday was of course inpired by this remark. It's important to notice that Chomsky is not in any way trivializing the fatwah itself or Rushdie's predicament. He's ridiculing a particular display of intellectual "courage".
And it is also the reaction of intellectuals that Christopher Hitchens, my second example, is interested in, albeit this time the reaction on the other side of the affair. "Here was an open incitement to murder," writes Hitchens of the fatwah, "accompanied by the offer of a bounty and directed at a writer of fiction who wasn't even a citizen of the theocracy [that issued it]." But while Chomsky is noting the eagerness of intellectuals to "courageously" rush to Rushdie's side, what struck Hitchens was the reticence of some intellectuals to defend Rushdie. Maybe, they argued, Rushdie really had done something to offend the Ayatollah? (I.e., maybe the Ayatollah had a point?)
In public debates with those who worried about the blashphemous or profane element in the novel, or who said that they did, I would always begin by saying, look, let's get one thing out of the way. May I assume that you are opposed without reservation to the suborning of the murder, for pay, of a literary figure? It was educational to see how often this assurance would be withheld, or offered in a qualified form. In those cases, I would refuse to debate any further. (Letters to a Young Contrarian, p. 48)
I generally like Hitchens on the issue of free speech, where he holds a position very much like Chomsky's. In fact, Hitchens defended David Irving when he found himself in almost precisely Ernst Zundel's position, and I think rightly so. It's a principled stance. But I'm sometimes less impressed with his debating posture, which often includes this sort of "refusal to debate any further" with people who won't denounce particular outrages worded in particular ways (by Hitchens himself, of course. I mean "suborning of murder"? Really. I think I'd mutter something under my breath too before granting the obvious truth he is proposing.)
The thing that strikes me about Hitchens's remarks here is that he wants unqualified assent ("without reservations") to a position that is, if you look closely, already put in a strangely "qualified form". Does Hitchens really mean that "a literary figure" should be more free from threats of assassination than other people? In fact, notice that he qualified his description of the fatwah by pointing out that Rushdie "wasn't even a citizen of [Iran]." Are the fatwahs that are in fact carried out against Iranian apostates less problematic?
As far as I can tell, Rushdie's state protected him (as it would probably have protected any figure, literary or not, if a $6 million bounty had been publicly put on his or her head). I think the interesting issues here do not turn on the fatwah as such, but on the reactions of intellectuals, and the lack of reactions to comparable actions of their own states.
(elaboration of a theme by Noam Chomsky)
Anything we love can be saved. So far as I can tell, Alice, I am Ernst Zündel. For the sake of argument, pretend I am Salman Rushdie. You may then ask, "Was he really Salman Rushdie? He did not appear to resemble him." He was indeed Salman Rushdie. He said, "Yes, I am Salman Rushdie. And this is what I offer you, hugging Fidel, becoming what we're called. It is the story of why I connect oppressions."
So then I got the notion of the "I Am Ernst Zündel" buttons. For a time, it was an omnipresent pin on the lapels of writers. It was akin to pondering the possibility that somewhere in Iowa, in the spirit of Cyrus the Great, Islam is a peaceful religion. It turned out that he had gotten his very own girls in pearls, a clear indication that he understood. But Salman Rushdie wearing his "I am Ernst Zündel" button: Holy Shit! What a remarkable and funny man. He invariably spoke in support of freedom of speech.
If you are Salman Rushdie, don't think I will ask you how to become a published author. I have turned my back on the sport of wearing a giant badge with the words "I Am Susan Sontag" emblazoned across it. Soon every right thinking, or indeed left thinking, citizen in America will be thinking "I am Ernst Zündel".
wrote Norman Mailer in his open letter to JFK.
"Obviously, I hoped you would get in..."
Let us leave the rest of that letter until the celebrations are over. I, too, am celebrating. For what it's worth.
At the end of 2005 (was it really so long ago?) there was a bit of flameup about whether certain people (one of them was me) were qualified to have an opinion about Flarf. At around this post (sadly, Gary was forced to delete the post I linked to, for now hazy reasons), doubts were raised about "I Am Not the Pilot" qua Flarf. I.e., it was suggested that it was not, finally, very flarfy at all.
It was a very complicated discussion, which hooked into the old Punk vs. New Wave conflict, and it seemed to me at the time to be easiest just to grant that Tony's poem isn't "flarfy". What's wrong with New Wave anyway, right? But I just read Sharon Mesmer's "I Am Apparently Unable to Subscribe" (Annoying Diabetic Bitch, p. 56). Certifiable flarf, yes? But, if anything, it seems derivative of Tony's poem. The last line even involves a kind of "epiphany", which (if I recall) was Gary's main objection.
...never dies but sometimes kills," I blurted out at the coffee maker just now. "Hey!" said I. "That sounds like an original bit of epigram." "Yes, but 'sometimes'? Isn't it rather often?" asked a colleague. Then it hit me. Rock and Roll always kills. It's a tautology. If it didn't kill you it wasn't rock and roll. It rules too.
"But first we must learn to understand what it is that opposes such an examination of details in philosophy." (Wittgenstein, PI§52)
Tomorrow morning I will begin work on a short book to be called Composure. I've talked about this project before, but I have now decided to give myself three hours a week (one hour every other morning) to actually make some progress. The basic idea is that composure is the resolution of crisis, and that crisis is a discord of belief and desire, a schism of knowledge and power.
Composure is found in the homologies of grammar, both philosophical and poetic. Remarks and strophes are arranged to tune our intuitions to our institutions, the immediacies of our seeing and our doing. That's a pretty obscure way of putting it. In the book I hope to be able to make this clearer.
"Clearly I'm interrupting; I feel badly. Let me ... what are you drinking? I'll buy y..."
"Bad."
"Bad? Sorry, I feel...?"
"You feel bad. Badly is an adverb, so to say you feel badly is to say that the mechanism which allows you to feel is broken."
(From the movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang)
I'm grateful to Thomas Presskorn for bringing this scene to my attention (more here). My view is that poetry should make us feel better. I.e., better able to feel, not full of better feelings. A specific poem should make us more capable of feeling specific emotions; it should not fill us with warmer feelings about particular subjects.
This goes even for love poetry with a direct addressee. The poet is not hoping to introduce a loving feeling into the heart of the object of his or her desire. Rather, the poet is implicitly saying, "The mechanism that would otherwise allow you to feel love for me appears to be broken. Here are some exercises that might fix it." This is why a good love poem has a utility beyond what Ezra Pound called the "one obvious remedy" for the poet's unhappiness.
Message from Ezra Pound:
The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.Nunc est bibendum
Nunc pede libero
Pulsanda tellus. (ABC, p. 14)
Here at the Pangrammaticon we will be spending the day listening to the Brandenburg Concertos, pounding the ground with our free feet.
