I'm not convinced that the typography on Francis' tomb was an error. For example, it's common in older buildings (~18/19 c) in Transylvania to find Roman numerals highlighted within words in texts on murals and facades of buildings. If you reassemble the numbers, or perhaps sum them, you'll get a certain year, perhaps the year it was built, or some date significant to the message. There is a name for it, and it's in Chambers Book of Days, but I can't bring it to mind. At any rate, the two widely spaced letters on the tomb inscription are A and V. Which, I'm guessing, might have something to do with Α and ω.
Definitely off the local theatres for a bit. To observe the Shakespeare last night, I had to slog through an immersive thing--fog machines leaving a haze, uncomfortable seating, actors improvising with audience, etc. This included a spritz with some scented water from a water pistol and Friar Lawrence mashing his fist against my ear rather forcefully to mime the fact that he had caught some sort of an insect that he wanted me to listen to. Noblesse oblige.
If I had travelled to Athens to observe the sacred festival, and someone had suggested that I instead go to a small smoky room to listen to some artistic chanting, I would have ignored him and proceeded to my place in the Lycurgan stone theatre. To go to the theatre, one must go to the theatre. I've performed in some street theatre, actually at a relatively high level, but I strongly suspect that this immersive thing (which, in fairness, is thought by most marketing folks to be an amazing new thing that will transform the art) is simply a commercial device designed to mask the deliberate decline of the art. Staging a play is not merely an art -- it constitutes the art. Post-dramatic is not a good thing, if you were hoping for the drama. It's like arriving for lunch when things are post-lunch.
Rather peaceful day, at least for most of it. From time to time, it occurs to me that, given the larger circumstances, phenomenologically, things could be much worse. (This is partially established by the fact that things have been much worse in the past, within the same general circumstance--I could a tale unfold.) The incongruity, though, does give me some pause. Not to imply that the bad things in life are sent upon us by some dark malevolent force that is as creative as Hegel's spirit of history when confounded, but I must be sure to stay on my toes. Things can come out of left field sometimes.
#sabbathdaymusic #dead #Cornell #581977
https://archive.org/details/gd77-05-08.sbd.hicks.4982.sbeok.shnf
R&J at one of the city's theatres. Quite good, some spot-on moments, bold concept. When you know these plays very well, and for some reason I still do--apparently they're near the center of the mind, and you're watching folks from another culture stage them, the mind divides between seeing what they excavate from their own cultural context to reveal and sensing the lines of gold and diamonds just beneath, or to the side, and wanting very much to point them out. Luckily, as an audience member, I have only one option there, and it's still quite enjoyable. Though a Love's Labours in the ex-Yu. concept has been percolating through my consciousness for some time now.
Not at all an expert, but I'm beginning to think that the last papacy set the church on course towards a post-political identity, grounded in liturgical doctrine and charity. Francis was a great pope, but he didn't use the office to press for major changes in doctrine or practice, or to advance the interests of a certain side in geopolitics. The ground of the church was the church.
One danger might be that the powers that be in the national churches, who are very much invested in the political questions aired in church forums and the NYT, might begin to understand that the papacy is shifting to a different ground, and they might not like that. (The newly chosen successor of Peter was brought to Rome and raised to the highest rank in the College of Cardinals and the curia by Francis, so I would expect things to continue on the same course.) Witness the odd coolness from some on the left given the new fellow's (entirely doctrinally correct and charitable) statements about civil unions and such.
Add to that the as-a-given uneasiness of the other half of the NYT-reading Catholic leadership, the wealthy and socially conservative types.
The question might be whether the office is stronger than the political machinations supporting it. Given the office that we're talking about, I think (again, wiseacring non-expert) it might have a fighting chance.
Interesting day. It's the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, which seems at first glance to be a devotion of Italian origin centered on some healing miracles, and placed roughly opposite in the calendar to the rosary feast instituted after Lepanto. But there's a much older feast as well, one that I encountered when looking at some of the history in this part of the world -- the apparition of St. Michael the Archangel on the mountaintop. The pilgrimage to the mountaintop on this day was apparently a very important event at points in the medieval calendar. (Though if memory serves, one of the local observances moved it to the day before.)
The angelic cults and feasts are generally of eastern origin, and very broadly speaking, the Marian and rosary devotions are closer to the developed, established hierarchy of the Latin church. And, of course, Leo XIII is closely associated with St. Michael, with the prayer after Mass very popular in certain areas of the American Midwest (and occasionally sneaking into the Mass itself, before the dismissal). He was also a bit wary of Kantianism and Americanism, so I might have had difficult time making light talk, if I had found myself alongside the sede gestoria in the late 19th c.
Beyond doubt, one of the historic events of the age. The American mind will apparently have to sort through a few things in the coming years. The shining city on the hill might yet prove the litmus, one way or another. So those of us with some acquaintance with it have some thinking, reading and writing to do. Even if no one's listening quite yet.
Prejudice, it is true, is mighty, and so is the greed of money; but if the sense of what is just and rightful be not deliberately stifled, their fellow citizens are sure to be won over to a kindly feeling towards men whom they see to be in earnest as regards their work and who prefer so unmistakably right dealing to mere lucre, and the sacredness of duty to every other consideration.
If you compare the number of scientific studies refining various industrial processes with the number of studies looking to determine how to brew the healthiest cup of coffee (brewed by billions each day), you do get some sense of the nature of the mechanism. Even having built the mechanism of utopia, you do have to decide to realize utopia.
To the city's national theatre for a farce by the 19th c. national playwright. ($6, balcony) I've seen this playwright's work in three cities, and it's very different in each of them. Shades of Hoffmann's short story Donna Anna at points. The standard line is that this playwright isn't political at all, but that received idea was developed during the dictatorship; this is clearly a very interesting allegory of 19th c. constitutionalism, along with an authorial type (the playwright was a newspaperman and politically influential) who gets a bit roughed up in the course of things. It's not unreasonable to think that the 19th c. political fights here had an element of physical menace to them; perhaps there was some back-story there.
The style is much broader here than in the capital or at the university festivals, but the reason that it's broad is that generations of audience memebers have imprinted themselves upon it appreciatively, and perhaps even gratefully. Watch a national playwright's work in his or her home country carefully, and you will have before you a small group of people trying to tell you absolutely everything (and quite possibly succeeding in the attempt).
Historically, this part of the world has been at times a place of refuge for scholars from the northern wars; in early modern times, they were often of an alchemical bent, writing treatises under the patronage of the local nobility, and sending them off to the German book fairs. There's also a strong impulse to a vivification of life by the mythic and the ancient; the fantasy sections of the bookstores seem comparatively well-stocked, relative to other parts of the region. (Though it is common to the region; in Belgrade at night these days, a colossal LED image of a (14th c?) king lours over the river bridges.) And with the tech boom, like the American Pacific Northwest, the costs of living in this area have significantly outpaced both what the underlying non-tech economy could support, and the country's historical balance of income allocation. While there are certainly a good number of penurious folks, the standard of living in this part of the world is very high, even relative to countries with higher income levels; second homes in the country appear to be quite common, and housing is generally very liveable. (This part of the world sees it as a social obligation to build a sufficient number of homes for the population.)
But with the surging rents locally, it's clear that some sort of Camelot is being conceived. According to the old (Norman) legends, Camelot was created by Merlin's tracing of a circle in the earth. When value outpaces worth, look carefully at the sources of irrational desire.
The blue suit, and worse, the national flag in the lapel. The walking on the carpet. Possible mistakes. Especially odd, as there's a chance the host upended a centuries-old global diplomatic protocol to give him a better seat. The AI photo... Well. Imagine the next head of the church did the same with a threadbare Uncle Sam costume and a banjo. You get the idea.
Possible anger at decreased popularity among Catholics after several key appointments in the first term. But this was clearly (a) a sop to evangelicals; and (b) an attempt to spread an image, like the royalty-based ones, that unconsciously influences a public guided by the constant stream of images on the wires.
The image of the head of state had a peculiar effect in early modern times. It created a direct notion of power -- we use the word state as an extension of the physical presence of the sovereign, and this started at around that time. Although the facts are on point, this isn't like an embarrassing doodle in a royal sketchbook -- this image was AI on two levels -- first, on the technical rendering, but second, more important, a thought placed in people's heads. For some reason, I remember a newspaper article, many years ago, with an interview with a graffiti artist. He proudly pointed to his work and said: "See that? I just made you think that."
Procedural legitimacy is justified in two dimensions. The first is that a stable society follows from everyone inhabing their role, or playing within their understanding of the game. The second, perhaps unique to liberal democracy (or perhaps more general), is that in the determinations of the several roles and the game-playing, a sufficient number of ideas is created to give people an understanding of the event. There must be sufficient freedom and understanding constituting the exercise of power so that the objects of the power can identify the freedom of the lawgiver with the freedom of the subject. In a free and equal society, this provides the basis for the lawgiver's freedom. One must exercise power to preserve sufficient freedom for the exercise of power.
When the ways of thinking about power change, they don't so much augur political change, as make it a logical necessity. The building falls because the nature of gravity has changed.
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