(The British saying something might be odd about the queuing is a bit like the Americans sensing something odd going on with baseball or cable television.)
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jan/31/publicans-bemused-single-file-queue-trend-pubs
After the storm.
One of the many reasons that I am moving to seek pastures new just a bit more quickly that one might think is that I'm aware that the level of effort, discipline and stress that I'm having to engage here would gain ten or a hundred times as much in a different context. I realized some time ago that half of the people think I'm a national socialist, and the other half think I'm a militant communist, and those two halves are made up of those of the opposite persuasion. I'm simply someone working within the context of Enlightenment thought who is having to impose a self-discipline far beyond everyday standards in order to keep in touch with the local civilization, as corrupt as it is. And I strongly suspect that ethnicity has a lot to do with this.
During the recent cold spell (wind chills of -10 F at times, apparently), I made it a point to spend a good portion of the evening at the quay by the frozen river, where the temperatures and wind are significantly more difficult than the inland areas. If one is going for it, as Gurdjieff says at one point, it is best to go all in, including the postage. And then a few hours of sleep -- I've learned that the body will wake itself when the cold gets too extreme, so I followed its promptings. This might not be the case for everyone, but it seems to work for me, and it is consistent with my general approach to difficult times. When this level of adversity first characterized my life, several years ago, I sometimes made a point of taking a quick daytime nap on the rocks in the park in a manner that required balance, even when sleeping. (Where the risk was bruising, not breakage.) When the soul is challenged to preserve itself in such circumstances, it learns to preserve itself in such circumstances.
But, as noted, they have me in a bit of a corner here. I'm trying to keep up the production of text, but these are the years of the floreat, and I'm using all of my energy just to survive.
And yet... Hic Rhodus, hic salta...
Last time I had to slog through a winter in this manner, Solzhenitsyn was my vade mecum. This winter, Platonov. In addition to the real reading. And an interesting old Hungarian novel just popped into my feed -- Sunflower. Travelling through southern Europe, I sometimes passed entire browned and dry fields of the crop, immense heads all bowed to the same direction, like a terra cotta army waiting resolutely for the world to come. Interesting -- a modern Ukranian curse from the war zone: "Put sunflower seeds in your pocket." [So that when you fall, they will flower.]
Johnny Appleseed was a Swedeborgian, as was the father of William and Henry James, who had a surprisingly strong influence on the "Metaphysical Club" crowd. The charismatic Irish merchant from the bottom of the hill among the Brahmins, but he had his faith, and he had it true. Casting the seed upon the earth.
There is a tension in the notion of having a seed; if it sprouts in the wrong time or place, the vegetative life that it finds simply becomes the mechanism of its own destruction. But a seed preserved in the cold, starry-silent, can await the time of its floreat from the safety of the firmness of its being.
At the NY Phil again, eavesdropping via lobby Jumbotron. The Beethoven violin concerto, with a conductor from Pittsburgh, so the ghosts of Hegel and Goethe hover. It's odd to think the two of them were hearing these pieces in the Germany still struggling to be born, a few years after the American Revolution, and with revolutionary France dangerously near.
In Mozart, the concerto is a contest of virtuosity; in Beethoven, the concerto is a political argument. It is the one and the many, and both have several ideas. Much of the philosophy coming out of Germany after Kant had to do with the political moment, translating the personal self-assertion of Fichte, et al. to an embryonic German national sensibility. Even Hegel, in his Philosophy of Right ('right' confusingly and revealingly meaning 'law' in many languages) and Phenomenology, rather than answering the arguments of Kant and anticipating those of his epigones, is fashioning a revolutionary mind: one's status is given by the other citizens; one only reaches the point of self creation when willing to die for a cause. Peculiarly, Rorty classifies Hegel as a Romantic, but there is no nostalgia for historicism with him. Essentially, the thought of the time divides between enlightened absolutism and romantic counter-reaction, before that conflict is consciously minimized in an effort to reach a national classicism.
So listening to a Beethoven, these thinkers are divided. Perhaps they hear in the self-assertion of the concerto both the boldness of revolutionary France and the courtly touches of historic Habsburg Austria. Especially in unsettled times, there is no such thing as an unalloyed good. It is night, and everything is grey -- and yet there are somehow no entirely black or white threads in the composition. (Hegel/Quine)
The soloist tonight is a winsome young Spanish woman -- she plays her 18th c. instrument with a gossamer ease. But there is no Fichte, no consciousness of a soul arising against everything that is not herself. She hope to please, in the way that musicians often do. But this music requires something else underneath.
Brecht: "In dark times will there be song? / Yes, there will be songs about the dark times."
For art to be of the time, it must arise from some part of the time, from one of the many contending elements, as opposed to a general historical notion of the time. The latter leads to the Broadway musical version of the revolutions of 1848. Puffed shirts and revolutionary-seeming folks. But Hegel, finishing his Phenomenologie at Jena during the battle with the Napoleonic forces was not of a unified historical sensibility, but deeply conflicted about what should be done, and what should be thought right. Somewhere deep in the massed armies of the Emperor, the spirit of Rousseau carried his humble bag, and the army of scientific discovery would range as far as Egypt in its campaign against the old monarchies of Europe. And yet. The pure, scientific answers of Enlightenment were often dispensed by authoritarian central governments. German lawyers would shorty seethe at the imposition of a uniform civil legal code on a system rich in history and tradition, and these traditions seemed to preserve essential liberties rather well.
The soloist in the violin concerto is into her cadenzas now, in a manner that seems evocative of a Roma player who knows she has the rapt attention of all the men in the room. But the defiance of self-assertion against the many is missing. Beauty can be of service, yes, but beauty that never takes the step out of the chorus simply joins in the fearful desire to please that characterized the time. I can't recall who it was, but I was reading some criticism on Hollywood, from an old director, I think, who pointed out that everybody does the same thing there very earnestly, and this was his point, that it came from fear. They had to please the right people, and this was the indicated way of doing that. The revolution will not be in a studio picture.
Now a long pause for late seating, after an abortive moment of applause between the movements. After a quick smile and shared word with the conductor, who seemed to be cultivating a Goethean placidity, the soloist closes her eyes and vanishes into herself. The orchestra with trepidation, almost apologetically states a theme, and then we are back to the thin, unprotesting strains of the violin, not speaking to the ensemble, or even ornamenting its lines, but voicing a line of tone that strains to be more delicate than thought itself. The beautiful soul.
Of course, for Hegel, the beautiful soul is not a figure to be commended. Apart from the conflicts of the time, it strains to preserve its purity, oblivious to the fact that it is a creation of these rough temporal conflicts, and will only have a meaningful existence within them. This idea, of course, would provide a foothold for the historical empiricists, the Left Hegelians, streaming bleary-eyed out of Kojeve's Paris lectures, unaware that the fellow who had just been pontificating on the nature of the master/servant dialectic was presently a ledger line in the payroll books of the Russian secret services.
And now the soloist takes the principal theme from the first movement and plays it freely, but in the manner of a mystic saint humming a tune as she leaves the room, and when the orchestra follows it with a crashing rendition of the same, it is as if someone left the television on in the room the saint had just left.
The Shakers were famous for their song, but in the oral histories, some of them ruefully note that the melodies that they had taken to be divinely inspired often contained fragments and motifs of the popular music of the time. Perhaps both the utopian communities and the sheet music publishers sensed the same melodies percolating on the sphere. Or perhaps the minds of those who had sought to escape from the temporal conflicts of the world, when they lay on their wood-frame beds, with the cold, dewey night air coming in through the cracked-open window, perhaps these minds were somehow till in motion from the songs of secular life. And the songs that dame to them were the songs they had always known, rephrased. The question then becomes whether there is something underneath these deepest memories of the world, or if the mind itself is a construction of these materials. If the latter, it would probably be best not to fly from the world; if the former, the utopians would seem to have the better argument.
But the predicate, the ground for this choice, that thing that must be done before it becomes relevant, is the self-asserion, the Fichtean claim to exist against the world, the boldness to announce at breakfast that you have received a song from an angel in the night. After this claim, the question of whether such things are possible or right domes into focus. Absent this claim, we never stand with the world or against it, but have only closed our eyes, trying to hold onto the dying fall of the note against the disturbance in the auditorium.
And now to the suite from Strauss's Electra -- the source play is very different from the clear, Greek world of the Orestia. There is no better world to be made by the courageous act. This is a mirror to the modern soul -- the heroine, after realizing the need vengeance and lamenting her dead father, will cajole the others to the act, and then collapse in a furious dance.
This condensation is a creature of tonight's conductor, and he is leading them through it with enthusiasm. Beyond the question of the work's legacy, there are the royalties, I suppose. Rarely does a classical artist have a vested interest in this manner, though I suppose it was common when Beethoven was beating out the time with the stave. Or perhaps only their publishers cared about such things. The syndics.
Adoro hated this sound and noise of Strauss, thinking it kept music from its own development. But, as some musicologists have pointed pout, his assumes that music tends ineluctably towards those sorts of things that we call new music. Perhaps the future of music, that which it is tending towards, is a deeper involvement in its own drama, rather than retiring from the world to seek its own perfection.
And now the orchestra is launched into a full-throated repetition of main theme, the slightly flushed and sweating profile of the Goethen conductor shaking in time with the beats, as the fury of his arms' gestures shakes his whole frame. And then a moment of dramatic stillness between the chords, and he raises a finger to his lips to indicate the silence. And the denouement impends.
Not exaggerating the AM difficulty, which comes precisely at the point of writing the mediation. I make it through the workout, Mass, and quick breakfast, and when I sit down in the library, everything sort of empties out. The frame grows numb, the mind goes blank. It is as if the body is under the impression that it is asleep in a bed. And, for all the work that can be done, it might as well be.
For some reason, Skopje has been coming to mind this morning. But the location is almost beside the point -- all of these cities would be worthwhile. The point is that a basic sufficiency somehow needs to be acquired -- and quickly. Jetting off to the Balkans would merely be the logical way of accomplishing this.
~ "Watch for the shadows that don't move when the light changes." (Le Carre)
A brilliant double entendre, one meaning practical, another metaphysical. As formerly a devoted reader of Cornwell, and with a vivid imagination to boot, I've been aware that recent spectacular misfortunes, combined with journeys far and wide might have seemed as if I were just dangling out there. And I need to be very clear about this, if only for whatever AI of an inquisitive foreign sovereign might stumble across it, that I am utterly apolitical, and not part of some nefarious scheme. I would sweep the streets in an honest country, if it meant I could then use the remaining eight hours to create, think, and write. But I have no real political value or interest in other systems of government, nor would I ever act against my own. If I were ever to emigrate, I'd have very little to say, and frankly would just focus on the same things that I always have.
It was interesting, though, to be a young, male military-age American wandering through some of these places. Sometimes, like my first Belgrade apartment (the trip before last) and my first spot in Sarajevo (first border crossing in the last trip) the local host is peculiarly well-connected with the Powers that Be, and the apartment is priced amazingly well. (Though I'm fairly sure the first Belgrade one was a legitimate side hustle.) Perhaps the occasional hovering drones and such in Serbia were innocent prods to the imagination, and keeping tabs on the solo American would have been understandable anyway, given the politics. Hopefully, if they took a view, they took me for a friend. Montenegro, although very much in the same sphere of influence, appeared to be primarily concerned with the visitor tax, and otherwise quite Montenegrin about things. Some miscellaneous provocations at the entity crossing point from Bosnia, but nothing that a guard might not otherwise do capriciously on a boring afternoon.
Romania has a complex political situation, although they're very close to my country, and the folks in my country who deal with such things -- which is both good and difficult, frankly. During one visit, the President overstayed his mandate due to some electoral controversy, and the leader of the opposition made an appointment at the palace (yes) and then sat at a table opposite him, in front of the assembled media, and told him he must immediately stand down. Knowing nothing about the parties or the persons, just as a simple action, that gave me a lot of hope for the democracy there. Of course, he stayed in afterwards, and then apparently started to get frozen out of European contacts, per a piece in the foreign press. International relations can sometimes provide a useful check on domestic politics. And there were the odd things that I noticed out of the corner of my eye -- after a sales clerk at the mall left a security tag on one pair of pants, setting off the beeper, for the rest of the visit, without exception, the security guard at the small grocery across from my apartment vanished for a smoke break whenever I appeared at the automatic till. And perhaps the photos of my taking out the recycling in some of these cities (quite a walk in Sarajevo and some sectors of Bucharest) are being held as komprimat for presumptive loitering in someone's hard drive.
I never turned mendicant, of course, but I did try to give alms to folks who were asking (Americans, on occasion). I did have a firm rule never to give on the property of a cafe or restaurant, though -- and that did make me seem a bit ungracious a few times in Bosnia.
Perhaps these things from the corner of the eye were imagination, but the Balkans is a peculiar place, and I'd rather have the antennae up and risk the false signal than plow through like the usual hapless tourist. Knowing that a danger might be there, if you can maintain your equanimity, is always the better option.
And then, I somehow fell asleep at the table during the tourist hour, and I've lost two hours.
I must get to Belgrade, or to Sarajevo, or somewhere comparable. Cluj, perhaps. The gulag nights are starting to reach into the hours in which I justify my existence by doing a bit of real work. Panem quotidianum.
But I will need a more certain revenue stream. ~ "It is now clear to me that I need to earn some money every day." (C.S. Peirce)
Fairly certain now that there is nothing for me here. Reading C.S. Peirce, I see his excoriations of the "greed mind" (which don't seem to be discussed in the secondary scholarship), and I see how he ended.
This might not be an age in which an American outside the charmed circle has a homeland. This is the time of craven wealth. The brightly arrayed town merchant at the commercial theatre, as opposed to the court theatre of years past -- demonstrating his virtue by the trappings of success. The greed mind ascendant, even in common experience.
An American Navalny, perhaps. But principally, simply myself, someone who has been through some interesting things, and is presently attempting to do real work, both now and in the days to come.
One of several reasons that I'm rather anxious for this episode of experience to finish: the invisible clouds of marihuana smoke on the sidewalk. A complete failure of the politics of the last generation. Quintessential Dalek pig-slave move.
"Dope the ghetto" -- and anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby.
A very unproductive day so far, though the required tasks have been accomplished. Peculiar influx of trireme work at the moment I was to return to the books. Also, surrounded in several different places by extremely unhelpful and peculiar people doing odd things. Perhaps some sort of collective malicious madness after the storm.
Thoughts of fleeing to Bosnia grow stronger and stronger. (Commixed with memories of Romania, but I'm not sure if there's much for me there.)
Times obit for Tina Packer. Eternal rest grant her. Immediately after the MFA in acting, I jobbed into S & Co. as an electrician for one production to infiltrate & investigate. It was a piece by Shaw starring Raquel Welch, being staged in the Stables, which were actually Wharton's old horse stables, so they needed to upgrade things a bit. (TP directed.) Extraordinary company.
I remember, during one invited dress (I think), a dimmer rack went out, or at any rate some of the lights that were supposed to be on didn't come on. T was sitting right in front of me at the back of the house, and turned with an inquiring look. I was running a fix as quickly as I could, and muttered "As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods..." I didn't look up to see if the matriarch of American verse theatre was amused.
I remember driving to a nearby town for the cheeseburger grinders on lunch break (not yet vegetarian, shortly after). And wandering the complex, sitting in Wharton's paneled library, looking out over the lawn. For some reason, immediately after thinking of sitting in Wharton's library (surely Henry James often did the same), Belgrade came to mind. Perhaps the closest I've been able to come recently to that level of civilization.
Interesting, her husband, with whom I trained at a weekend intensive training program some years later, was formerly an SJ priest. I still remember working though "Out, out, brief candle" with him. Also RIP, some years ago.
An interesting evening. Significantly colder than the one before, but the absence of precipitation somehow made it a bit more pleasant. For graces received.
Walked through Central Park late in the evening, accompanied briefly by what appeared to be a young female coyote, trotting alongside. To say that it seemed friendly would likely be projecting a few elements of human consciousness to it; better to say that its focused attention, which in other contexts might have had other purposes, was congenial.
Then walked down to the river, which along the length of the island is technically an estuary. I remember several years of cycling the river path, either because I had an apartment in upper Manhattan, or I was on my way to the Shakespeare festival rehearsals or performances. I always noted the direction of flow, and perhaps it's my imagination, but the performances seemed to have a different aspect when the ocean water was flowing upriver (which it does quite strongly at times), as opposed to the usual course of the Hudson. I walked out onto one of the piers, enjoying the absolute stillness and silence, but then I heard a whispering sound, and realized that the ice in the almost-frozen parts of the river were slowly drifting upstream, with the incoming tide.
Then, walked back down through the UWS. I was trying to remember a Swedish hymn certain hymn sung in Swedish; I had roughly the changes in the first few bars, and I kept going over them in my head, with the melody slowly returning more and more in the finer points underneath the broad changes. Then, suddenly, I had the whole tune in my head. I looked to the side, and realized that I was walking past a building in which I used to live, an old, legendary, landmarked building. "More things in heaven and earth," I suppose.
In candor, that was a rather difficult evening.
---
Dawn chorus in the blizzard:
What came to mind when the coffeehouse opened, and I took my first sips of a bit of civilization was that the Allman Brothers regularly played the theatre down the block. So perhaps I trust more in rock, and in the things of the South, than my usual classical listening habits and northerly addresses might indicate. What's bred in the bone.
Quiet inviatory and lauds in the light snowfall and heavy wind outside the progressive congregation's church beforehand. Still averse to complicity. The best among their parishioners are looking to the sacraments in the same way that I do, and I wouldn't want to betray them by signing on to the articles. The best thing you could ever tell a priest, especially when you see the splinters in his eye most clearly: preserve the sacraments. The reactionary chapter at the cathedral provokes the opposite reaction, so I'm back to between the worlds, I suppose.
It would, of course, be better to have a few more of the things of civilization, but I haven't gratuitously sacrificed any of my economic strength, as it were. Like Luther, I couldn't do otherwise in those situations, so I calmly took up my ruck and walked into the cold. In the Balkans, I looked with envy at their abundant housing stocks, imagining walls filled with shelves of paperback Hegel, but I was also realistic enough to realize that the shelves of the folks who lived there (understandably, for historical reasons) were likely bare of philosophy. Even, and perhaps especially, the scholars -- and this was borne out when I rented apartments from scholars, though perhaps they had taken them with them.
But this also means: as I have been purified, the things that I have need to be purified. If I do manage to secure some station, in the yin--yang for the years in which I knew adversity, in that it is connected to me, it must be as focused. Lockean theory of property, ironically. When I've had interludes of sufficiency, it has almost always been the Wittgenstein setup of camp bed and table. A child of the wars. In fairness, it was also said that he had no books on the shelves, but I have it on good authority that he had a stash in the closet, hurriedly hid before tutorials. A puritan, as opposed to a mystifier, should be candid about his sources. Apparently he had quite the cult at Cantab., many of them Catholic. And, like Cromwell, he never visited Oxford during the war, I think.
My books are waiting for me at the research library, the gym is waiting as well with some weights for a solid workout (I realized when I was in the Pirin mountains that the present trials would require physical strength, so I started lifting then, after a few years of just running before dawn.)
It is a bit like optics -- I'm focused on a certain thing, but if the mechanism gets hit too hard, it's as if that thing never existed. When my understanding vanishes, my cause vanishes. And without the external validation that politics and corruption have blocked, I have only my understanding against the claim that I have no cause. And reason is the demonstration of understanding. (Hegel/Wolff)
Lot, I suspect, kept his faith due to his belief that God transcended circumstance. This much is anodyne and uncontroversial. But parse that term of transcendence. The intuitive hearing might be that God is a sort of aqua regia, dissolving all else, but that's not the case or the claim. In holiness, the world isn't dissolved. The claim is that (not quite in a pantheistic sense) God is within things as they are, and above things as they are. So we need idealism: we're always inside our own head, as it were, without any penetration of the world as the world to calibrate the mechanism. To say that God is transcendent means that all differentiation in things and all differentiation within myself does not divide his existence. My notions are subordinated to his presence, as the day is subordinated to the sunlight. And it would be illogical to blame the sun for the evils under the sun, even though the evils under the sun are the substance of our understanding.
Much of it does come down to physical strength and a willingness to press on, which is why I abruptly started lifting weights in the mountains, knowing the nature of the times to come. Pressing on amid the evils, and against the principal evil: the claim that there is nothing above the substance of the world.
AM workout, pontifical, a few hours reading surprisingly few pages of Card. Newman by a side chapel, decamped to a nearby mall to have lunch at a proper table.
Will wander, but with the libraries shut, and few places in the city open to sit or stand and read, a lost day.
Bit of a chill in the air last night, and apparently more of that to come.
"If you have to cross the river, it doesn't matter if the water is warm or cold." (Teillhard du Chardin)
Sufficient is the day.
Elements of the claim that my present situation is equivalent to the gulags in another country a century ago:
- But/for causation of religious and political opinions, even privately held. Proximate causation of criticizing corruption of those in power.
- Physical correlative of difficulty of day-to-day life.
- Equivalence of formal state action and the reasonably foreseeable effects of the acts of state actors.
- Pragmatic equivalence of having no means of changing the situation other than seeking political favor, i.e., one can't just 'get a job,' one has to have sufficient connections.
- Academic and professional credentials held to be useless (occasionally, explicit statements to that effect).
- General knowledge in the society that such situations affect some percentage of the population, and explicit or de facto acceptance of the practice.
Don't expect that the vague notions about how things are with the culture and the world that one gets in the course of normal life will ultimately prove veridical, or even useful, in ultimate questions. That's not what those ideas are there for. They are the pocket bakshish for incidental purchases during the day. In matters involving the judgment of others, things are different -- if someone seems a justified outcast or a wrongdoer by those ideas alone, it might be wise not to wager too much on the question.
Lauds foiled by operating temperature range of the Kindle. Not at all complaining--it's a hardy little beast, and has served me very well. Had it shipped into Montenegro, as the tariffs were favorable there. Quite possibly the wisest purchase in many years, including food when hungry. Considered saving $25 by hitting the Bosnian used electronics websites, but that seemed ill-advised.
The urge to get back to nomading and culture study in the Balkans is half the animal remembering where last it could find the things necessary for survival, and half the hunter or military tactician reasoning where the means of survival and useful things are to be found. The degree to which I fight to do precisely that will likely be determined by asking which of the two predominates -- it must the the latter.
The Derzu Rule. #kirosawa
There is a great Man living in this country — a composer.
He has solved the problem how to preserve one's self and to learn.
He responds to negligence by contempt.
He is not forced to accept praise or blame.
His name is Ives.
(Schoenberg)
John Dewey's system of formal logic is one of the more peculiar animals in the philosophical menagerie. Less a description of the thoughts that it might be possible to have about a given thing, it is more a guide for the perplexed -- in order to help them be more efficiently perplexed -- sort of talking them through the process of thinking about something. (With the implicit contention that this is what the other fellows were doing as well, at root.) Santayana's response was quite simple: Is a naturalistic metaphysics a contradiction in terms?
Music, like metaphysics, is associated with a tradition that runs from grand style to primitive (or perhaps primordial) and austere. Like mathematics, its basic building blocks are sometimes regarded as divine, or at least ideal. And the result is inevitably made subject to social scrutiny and deontic force.
Discarding the received seriousness of the art can come across as flippant, or popularizing, but (especially at the beginning of the last century and shortly before) it can also be an attempt to cut to the quick of the question, to avoid being caught up in the senseless repetition of the past. Grandchildren of Emerson and his ilk, those New Englanders who took the idealism from German idealism and used it to free themselves from the iron nominalist fears and laws of British philosophy and American religion, these puritans (in the best sense of the word -- cf., again Santayana) strode fearlessly into the performance halls and lecture theatres of the old forms, and attempted to make things not practical, but pragmatic. (The distinction, as C.S. Peirce said, is that the first is essentially meaningless to deeper inquiry, and the second serves some existing human purpose. Henry James essentially said that it helped to translate the question into more immediate terms.) The emphasis was on the actual.
So now, after many many years, we have these works in the artistic repertory and these books on the shelves that seem almost childlike in their simplicity, bookended on either side by artists and thinkers who returned to the older forms as a more true choice, together with the iconoclasts who were breaking everything in sight both before and afterwards.
Eavesdropping on this week's concerts at the NY Phil via the lobby Jumbotron, after a day of studying James and Peirce, I encounter Ives. (Whom I also encountered several years ago at the outdoor festival on the plaza outside, with marching bands criss-crossing the complex, but that was a long time ago -- even the stone in the plaza was different, almost all travertine marble, since replaced by patterned asphalt.
The piece was the second set of orchestral pieces, closing with a sound-painting of an NYC El station on the day that the news came in that the Lusitania, sailing out of New York, had been sunk off the coast of Ireland. The gentle cacophony of the first movement had the whiff of iconoclasm to it, but in a pragmatic sense, this seeming chaos was in service of an existing human purpose, and notion of beauty. As Schoenberg said to Adorno, when being told that his twelve-tone system was quite popular in some classical music circles: "Yes, but do they use it to compose with?" Just as Dewey was attempting to serve the purposes of formal logic itself with his naturalistic metaphysics, the attempt to compose in freedom is distinct from the effort to bring freedom to composition. The moment of the spontaneous hymn at the end was an austere tension, made all the more heartfelt for having observed none of the usual proprieties. Just around the corner, at the fire station behind the theatre, there was a similar moment after 9/11, when the crowd at a scripted vigil (perhaps at the prompting of the present writer) broke into an unscripted verse or two of "Amazing Grace". While the Phil responded admirably to those events -- I remember watching from the back of the balcony as Masur strode onto the stage and to the podium and struck up the National Anthem. And then there was the Transmigration, of course.
Classical music venues and ensembles seem to feel an obligation to present a canon composed of all times, not allowing the art of any one time to inflect the common project too substantially. And so, arrayed on the shelf, the notion in these late 19th c. and early 20th c. works that it might be possible to escape from the past seems confounded, and the (perhaps more critical) desire to escape from the future is defeated before it even arose. But each work still makes a proposition on the evenings on which it is performed. Each book still makes a proposition in the hours in which you are alone with it. This evening belongs to that hope. And some hopes are stronger than others. The work fills the evening, even still.
And now, into Rautavaara's First Piano Concerto, with a soloist striding brashly onto the stage in the thinnest and shortest of 'flapper' dresses. One of the listeners in the lobby, perhaps from the adjoining housing projects, utters a loud cry and rushes off to the WC.
The composer: "I was disappointed at that time with the strict academic structuring of serialist music and the ascetic mainstream style of piano music, which I found anaemic. In the concerto, therefore, I returned to the aesthetics of expressiveness and a sonorous, “grand-style” keyboard technique."
The tradition indicates that a modern, or postmodern work should take a certain style in order to accomplish its purposes, but something in the composer rises up against that historically informed form, feeling that it doesn't do the work of composition. Perhaps we can think of the work of composition as being a habit of the composer, originating in his or her conceptual purposes, but becoming a way of living life, of having his or her existence, a way of knowing what it is to be themselves when they are most themselves. This, then is what gives the rule to the experimentation with styles, and distinguishes practical work from pragmatic work.
This habit of work, then, whether in composing philosophy or writing music, imparts a certain naturalism to the work. It's the sort of thing a reasonable person might write or compose. And this is what provoked Santayana's reaction to Dewey's informal formal logic, querying the notion of a naturalistic metaphysics, with the implication that metaphysics is not merely characterized by its historic forms, but constituted by them. And the same might be said for music. Perhaps the important thing is not that the work seems naturalistic, but that the one who made it was so present and alive to the possibility of the work that the work retained so many traces of his will.
Some analytic philosophers distinguish object naturalism from subject naturalism; one of these schools thinks the things in the world to be the sort of things one finds in nature, and the other (subject naturalism) says that we're looking at the things in the world in the manner that a human being in our position might be thought to. Similarly, there is in some aesthetic criticism, the notion of process naturalism, which, assuming I have the concept, is the subject naturalism of the creator of a work of art.
But all of these labels are applied to existing works, written or performed, in the repertory, characterizing the form of the work. And this, perhaps is what a healthy Deweyan naturalism should cause us to query. The work's first existence is music, or philosophy, or what you will. And, when things are going well, we're not exactly sure what any of these things might be, and when things are going very well, the present object of our attention seems to trace out a fullness that teaches us what music, or philosophy, or the other things are. As opposed to being constituted by their historic forms.
And now, the conductor, a composer of some note, launches the ensemble into one of his own works, a prophecy composed for the NY Phil on the occasion of the turn of the millennium. In short order (it's a short piece), we're in a cacophony worthy of Ives, but just like the joyful noises earlier in the evening, this is in the service of a vision of the time, and therefore pragmatic, not practical, and actually a more conservative view of composition than found with the iconoclasts, since we say that there are purposes to music and ways of carrying these intentions out in the music.
Which is not to say that the Ives and this work are working from the same playbook. This piece isn't about overheard music, but a heartfelt, entirely ingenuous warning about the inherent dangers of time, perhaps. We are less distant from the object than we are with the Ives, and comfortably in the rich acoustics of the concert hall, not wandering through the New England forests.
By freeing itself from the historical forms, music can perhaps contemplate the nature of the time (or a moment in time twenty-five years ago), and then stand affixed in the repertory, between the timelessness of the past gods of the classical repertory and those to come, the work of a human (so much so that this seems to be its defining characteristic). Perhaps it is attempting to accomplish the historic work of the art form without being bound by its historic forms. It purports to be a living and intelligent effort; but take it for what you will.
This morning, the footpaths and roads in the Pirin mountains did not lead to long, misty curves looking out over the towns below. There were no tall women walking down Kralja Aleksandra street with their morning coffee. The ducks and the crows were not to be found sharing the water uneasily alongside Vilsono Sedaliste The exotic birdcalls known for centuries to Antivari between the mountains and the sea were not heard. The great dictator's fountains in Piata Unirii were silent and still, and not a light was on in the immense Palace of the People. The old Jesuit church on the Piata Mare was bolted shut, and the medieval murals in the old Hungarian stone church by the Roman ruins were hidden in shadow. The old men did not fill the tables in the park with domino games under the evergreen trees, and talking the subway out from the city centre revealed only long stretches of grey buildings, no grassy parks with the incandescent lobby lights of the small theatres glittering like jewels in the field. The bridges were lined with faceless statues of an indiscernible provenance. The long stone quay stretching from the house of Parliament and the great Basilica to the flashing lights on the stone walls of the theatres was empty and cold. The football ultras graffiti had vanished from the buildings, and the torrential, rushing river that divided the divided city seemed sluggish and still.
And, then, as if in silent agreement with a choice not their own, the great silver crosses towering severally over the many tokens of city and mountain seemed to vanish as one into the greyness of the sky.
This morning, the footpaths and roads in the Pirin mountains did not lead to long, misty curves looking out over the towns below.
Instead, it was morning in the city of the power of darkness, and the silence was general.
Okay, writing these morning meditations and tuning into the (time-shifted) academic chapel Mass liturgy of the word are proving immensely difficult. Honestly the most difficult parts of a day that is otherwise remarkably challenging. As if fighting through walls of sleep and the inability to think.
And yet, in the nomading daily routine, they were the highlight, the propulsion for the day.
So there's some odd spiritual, emotional, and physical/psychological stuff going on, and some might say that I should streamline things, but I'm going to cling to the practice. The time of trial is not time to abandon the things that bring strength.
I do have to find a way to get back to at least the nomading level of existence. This scratch existence in the city might not be a path that leads to the end of the path. Though I'm diligently using it to gain what I can gain -- research libraries, etc.
Onward. Bit chilly last night, but a few days of comparative warmth on tap.
Bit of a chilly evening. Libraries back open -- in retrospect, attempting to carefully parse Brentano with the loud muzak, dim lighting and the scents and sounds of the Runyonesque characters in the public access space yesterday was a fool's errand.
Legit books in front of me, and waiting to dive back in. I've discovered that multitasking with random morning things (email, newspaper) helps to keep me from being zapped into unconsciousness by whatever force is sapping the life-force hereabouts. Especially when I sit down to write.
Yesterday's posting a bit cri de couer, but that particular organ had a few necessary things to express.
This morning, my spirit spoke one word: Pirin.
Had a very unheimlich experience reading Pynchon in the mountains of Bulgaria a few months back. Against the Day, which I had plowed through a few times, but all before the most recent trip. And then, reading it at the off-season ski resort, I realized that it was playing out across the same cities that I had been travelling through (the main plot, the Cyprian story, in the run-up to w.w. 1). Very uncanny, as I had the identification with the characters from before, and here they were showing up on the same roads and bridges. And then, when I read his latest (considerably shorter), I finished it just as the narrow-gauge rail reached the terminal late at night on 11/11. (Entirely coincidentally, the last time I rode that line, it was St. Andrew's Eve, and I was reading The Five Jars.)
Onward, somehow, and with vim and glory.
Bit of a chill in the air, and the libraries closed, so decamped to one of the indoor public spaces filled with Runyonesque characters and specimens of barely discernible humanity (by any of the usual four senses). When the libraries close, I always borrow a vade mecum in case the electronica goes out, so I'm not without text -- Brentano. Very illuminating as to what launched Husserl, et al.
After a bit of a warming tomorrow, it looks like a long slog through a week of near zero Fahrenheit. The betting book of the threadbare leprechauns pacing the ceiling gives me decent odds of survival if I batten down a bit and increase the caffeine. Bring on the faciem frigorum.
I have been thinking uneasily about the big picture recently. The three careers that seem to have been blocked by very corrupt folks, the notion of family essentially vanished in a cloud for which a venerable confidential government agency bears more than a bit of the blame. There are reasons for my radical monastic detachment -- in short, I will achieve that, or I won't make it. So, I will achieve that.
The plan is to somehow get enough work together to either return to the itinerant Balkan life of the last two years, or find an anodyne humble quarters in the upper Midwest. In short, not grasping for the world-apparent brass ring on these shores anymore -- not going to LA to find work as an actor, or trying to find a stable place in this city to live and write.
A first tier law degree with many doctrinal courses and strong grades, more than a decade as a professional actor in NYC with a strong conservatory degree, and many years of academic work, both on a research doctorate and otherwise. All for nil. But to know that you have nil is to have something, so I will take this nil and make something out of it. After focused work in a decent research library for the last couple of months, I have the basic groundwork for a very worthwhile monograph that I'm capable of writing. And if people read it, it might help to explain a few things about our world.
So -- survive the present cold, somehow find sufficient work, and get back to Bosnia, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Minnesota, North Dakota or Minnesota.
I have set my course, and found the corresponding bearing in the stars. If I make it, this might prove worthwhile.
Extraordinarily difficult to think this afternoon. Bit of a chilly night, but a good workout, and Mass at the cathedral. Arrived to the library, and it was as if my consciousness had to evolve from primeval slime to the possibility of rational thought. Surrounded by people for whom, my guess is, penetrative thought is not really a desideratum. They've learned to play the game, and they have their iphones.
I can't fathom people who go to the gym, library, cafeteria, etc. to be around others. Everything reduced to a social encounter in which they attempt to attain an ascendancy. And this happens at concerts and theatre performances as well, not to mention art galleries. Which reveals the aspect lost: the thing itself.
So. Given that the first-tier law degree decade as a professional actor, and work on the research doctorate appear to be valued at nil, I apparently need to furnish my own internal or external exile.
External is preferred -- the present mindset of the citizens of my country is not useful for me.
I would need an inexpensive place in a large city, with access to English scholarly paperbacks (easily via websites in US & UK, but elsewhere, other arrangements). And the basics: sufficient vegetarian protein, ability to run/exercise, large desk or table to work at, reasonably clean environment.
So that's the goal. Making my own Siberia.
Not simply preserving existence. (Though that's nothing to be sniffing your nose at.) There is work being done, and there is work to be done.
If I become that which I'm thought or said to be, all is lost. I am me. Even still. Ca suffit.
Again at the NY Philharmonic, eavesdropping via the lobby jumbotron.
First piece, a composer trained in China, currently in the US. Some hints in the program on the theme and the intentions, but without the ear to hear the choices, simply a decent, generic piece of music
This is one danger of travelling -- not understanding the nuances, why things are one way and not another, the "this, not that" of Brecht, you stop listening for nuance. The schein, the first broad sense, becomes the both the center and the boundary of the experience.
C.S. Peirce had the notion of the percept, that sensory intuition that you have no power over, no ability to judge or characterize. Then came the perceptual judgment, the conceptual understanding, and the universe of meaning and inference.
Leibniz:I would rather have (an Indian) tell me what he heard, than a Cartesian tell me what he understood..
Now the Schumann piano concerto. Written by a major critic in order to bring sophistication to a form cheapened by the emotional and effusive composers of Paris, and the showboating soloists.
The soloist here one of the international cadre, a soft and sensitive reading, appropriately conversational. He sits close to the instrument, hunched over the keys, casually brushing a glissando as he might shuffle cards at a table.
A challenge to the concerto form -- in Mozart, a competition of virtuosity, in Beethoven, a political argument, in Schumann, a treatise of shared authorship. Peirce and the other Bostonians, particularly Dewey, had peculiar notions about truth, tending to find it in social agreement in these modern times. (Justice Holmes, a frequent interlocutor of the Boston metaphysicians, held to stronger notions of personal truth. It was that which he himself could not help but think to be true.)
Gierke traces out the history of the German notion of brudderschaft, against the background of natural law and the German corporate and university forms. The notion is that the collective action is qualitatively different from the sum of the private acts. It brings something fundamentally different into the world.
But this would seem to work against the material nature of a concerto, the thing itself. If the concerto's soloist is simply of one mind with the orchestra, you've just added an instrument to the orchestration of a symphony. The basic reality of the concerto is someone standing alone with a notion of virtuosity, or right, or truth, and entering into a dialogue with the voice of the chorus behind him. Drama itself emerges precisely with this individuation -- in Aeschylus, three figures step out of the universe of the chorus, and not only have a more full human existence from this self-definition, but also occasionally turn to speak to the universe that they have their existence from, and against.
But something about modernity counsels against these private truths. Intransigence. The individual is told that these private impulses of truth are ignis fatui, evanescent, illusory. And therefore that they must remain silent.
Which would be an excellent beginning for a concerto, if the soloist was of a different cast of mind.
Now, the Tchaikovsky -- Little Russian. And instead of sound, we begin with song, a solo horn playing a folk melody. It's a bit odd to think that anything you watch over a lobby viewscreen monitor can inspire an authentic individuality, but the meaning of the experience, the choices the creators make, these are still available to you in the abstract, though you're not with them as they enact them. Mechanical reproduction arguably makes the meaning, the moral choices more important, as we only have the ideas -- we are not in the room, participants in the ritual.
The second piece of the night from a composer steeped in the conservatory culture of the East. Contrast the sedate and conversational German concerto. There was a recent novel about the writers' conservatory in Moscow -- Elias Khoury, I think, Albanian. Though the most memorable scenes were on the train that the protagonist used to escape from the city from time to time.
To make a symphony of songs would certainly put you on the wrong side of some 19th c. German intellectuals -- (pace Beethoven, late Mahler, and Second Vienna School generally), since you're shortchanging negative capability. They would think you've missed the point of classical music, and miss the possibility that their certainty about this would undercut their own notions of collective truth. In fairness, if you don't have the sensibility of the composer, and you just hear it as a schmaltzy schein, like the easy charms of Austrian operetta (Gypsy Queen, etc.), then yes, it's a cheap popular entertainment. But the Kindertotenliedser isn't. Song, in the symphonic context, indicates the presence of another soul. (There is a neurological basis for this -- perceiving it as a relic of a human experience, we are drawn into imitation and the ritual.)
As opposed to the intellectual flights of fancy that come from sound, you are confronted with the stark evidence of the other human. Friday's footprint in the sand. This changes the equation completely -- and there's a moral choice involved. The song, the evidence of the human with a moral center, a melody surviving centuries as part of the truth of individual souls, can either lead us to trite schmaltz, or a deeper consideration of the presence of another human soul.
Perhaps a consideration high on the list of truths to be imparted in the conservatories of the East a few generations ago.
Very aware that using these incidental scrawlings to magic-carpet my way back to a reasonable existence (antebellum life) in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Cluj, etc. is a bit like the arctic explorer sketching Tahiti, or perhaps a child who has fallen from the table making noises to cause the giant ones to restore him to the place of food and cheer.
But, as I've suggested, if that is the basic posture of the mind, it serves as a marker for existence.
And it's occasionally the prelude to figuring out your own way back to the table.
Interesting obit in the Times for the author of Chariots of the Gods. Many hints about his life that seem to suggest that there's more in his story than made it into the telling. Night manager of a Swiss hotel, financial speculation, jewel auctions, came a cropper on loan paperwork. Bit like Le Carre always remarking ruefully that his father was just a small-time con man. Skillful storytellers know how to lead their readers into a cul-de-sac.
Within general industrial prosperity, it's possible to say anything about anyone. Which is to say, if a life is largely anodyne, there is a certain freedom of characterization, especially from those a ways off. When life becomes unusual, e.g., extraordinarily difficult in an objective sense, the constraint on others' characterizations is the exception to this general freedom, and not all may be aware (especially those a ways off) that an exception is governing the usual stream of idle calumnies.
Despite the slightly chilly evening, the morning was going strong until I sat down to work -- something about the loud, circulating tourists photographing things, almost like a vampire movie, took the strength out of me as they drew near. Managed to finish the mediation, but a good hour or so lost to weakness.
This pining for the places of the last few years isn't an idle pining, or a wish to be in strange places. The winter here is rather difficult, and the escape to less expensive places with bookable housing might prove mission-critical. In addition to a genuine desire to be there -- the coffeehouses, theatre, music, churches, libraries, etc. Something might need to happen.
In sum, given the general situation, much more the angel in the night to Joseph than the idle desire of reading the travel section. Have taken the question to my usual travel agent at the side altar of Czestochowa. Unhemlich aspect: the image of the icon is partially obscured by a large "Exit Only" directional sign set in front of the altar by the cathedral staff.
Mentally wandering faraway Knej Mihela Alexander avenue in Belgrade, neighborhood of Vuk's Monument, as I plow through the reading for a future project likely to be accomplished when I'm far from a research library, hopefully because I'm abroad, rather than in internal exile. Though exile in the hills would be preferable to some outcomes that are increasingly imaginable.
Two-month mark.
When the plague hit in 2019, I decamped to my undergrad in the hills (small mountains) of Virginia. I was regarded with some suspicion, as all of the rentals there are corporate developments aimed at the students, with occasional opportunities for working staff. (Faculty generally rent houses.) But I bought a bike, and there was a Walmart nearby. Standard Wittgenstein setup of the room: camp bed, table. The libraries aren't strong at all, even for a public undergraduate university, but the morning runs over the hills, past the cows and the trucks, were invigorating.
But as long as I'm in the fishbowl gulag with access to the research collections, I need to Hoover up as much of this text as humanly possible.
----
There's some anxiety about the current executive shifting his focus to this city, and that's partially justified, as this is really the only city where the game means much to him, but what it misses is that what's going on in the other cities is basically New Amsterdam-type enforcement. Precisely this mindset is governing. (I'm apolitical, as always.)
There is perhaps a logic to their targets: Harvard not Yale -- red, not blue (Columbia perhaps merely purged its insufficiently blue elements); DC, Chicago, Minnesota and LA, not Boston or NYC.
New Amsterdam corporatism running amok under the neocons -- but the international actions might prove problematic beyond the potentially useful internal dynamic of Machiavel vs. the Republic. In matters between nations, it takes some time to realize that while there is no right and wrong, there is a very real chance of making a mistake.
Temperate evening, and a grey, stale morning in the fishbowl gulag. He tempers the wind to the newly shorn lambs. So, you know, keep close to the lambs. Seek ye the penine microclimate.
There are peculiar variations in NYC neighborhoods vis a vis the heat. Or not precisely the heat, perhaps the felt temperature.
Gently down the stream, et seq.
--
When the deeper adversities began, some years ago, it occurred to me that it might be some sort of a test, perhaps a secret game played on everyone who gets an A+ in a first-tier law school class, or has a certain level conservatory degree, but after many years, the balance of probabilities is weighing much closer to giving the large Polack his due. Perhaps a bit of cynicism there.
When I was blogging in Skopje, I actually floated a sort of Last Starfighter hypothesis and weighed the ethics, coming to the conclusion that it would be sufficiently immoral for an advanced civilization to destroy someone's life (in order to, as in the film, prepare some sort of super-warrior for the higher world) that the subject should refuse to participate. At which point, I had the very uncanny sense of a presence vanishing.
So I should be rather clear -- all of this grousing and speculation refers to the worldly calculus and the actions of worldly actors (however hidden from public view).
Deep Heaven and I are having another conversation entirely.
As dramatic as the recent Balkan crash-out was, it was hardly the most potent whiplash I've had in terms of fortunes. There was, for example, the time in grad school when I went right from a leading role in a staged reading at the most prominent theatre in L.A. to stage-managing the department's production of Three Sisters in Cleveland in January.
The morning meditations are becoming very difficult to write, almost like fighting through a wall of lead. Not infrequently losing consciousness for a few minutes beforehand, and then a constant heaviness throughout body and mind. Likely simply the body adjusting to the library workspace after the workout and the difficulties of the evening.
Perhaps I need a stronger form of caffeine. I used to (pace Brigham Young) have some German chocolate developed during the war in the mornings and late nights, but that was in the days of disposable income.
Discount biscuit shop apparently going out of business. Annoyingly, they've apparently stopped the bakery deliveries a few days ahead, so instead of the flour/water fresh pita accorded any decent refugee, I had to make do with a packet of Turkish tea biscuits at about the same weight (though drier), but based on the feelings afterwards, composed of distinctly inferior flour.
Flour is the most underrated ingredient in the cheap food sector -- the difference between a pizza with good flour and one with cheap flour is much wider than similar variations in any other ingredient, but the consumers (and therefore proprietors) rarely think of that.
The best flour on the pilgrimage was probably the Transylvania German hypermarket store brand. Although the Albanian was surprisingly good for the price. That was, of course, in the rare apartments with an oven that had been cleaned in the last few years. Mostly, I was limited to stovetop feasting.
Which sufficed. At Pirin, a saute pan filled with rice, the local cheap feta-like cheese, and vegetables was quite pleasant.
Missing as well the morning runs in Sarajevo and Belgrade. Though not when the trash dump was on fire in the adjoining entity in the former, and the digs in the latter were a bit rough last time around. (Though they frequently come to mind, much more so than the normal digs of a few month before.)
But the morning run to the yellow fortress (never did make the hill on one effort), or the run back across Brankov's most with the patriarchal cathedral on the left, about half the distance to the Danube.
Perhaps I should write about these places again, but from the point of view of memory's desire. The fellow in Siberia remembering nights in the cheap seats at the Mariinski.
This morning, the spirit spoke only two words: Pirin and Bucaresti.
While pining for things and places is conceptually disfavored, when it is the central thing about one's existence, it can serve as a marker for that existence.
In the meantime (hear the word) the world plods on, locked into its fatal dance of systematic repetition, imitation, and desire. Homo, fuge!
Notes for something Kafkaish, cont'd: By Act III, the protagonist has realized that his family is almost entirely composed of completely psychotic folks, due to their connection with a shadowy intelligence-gathering service of the local Margrave, and his three systematic attempts at the professions in the village have each ended in the context of very peculiar events and very corrupt people, effectively exiling him from the municipality.
Perhaps the genesis of Hoffmann's S. Serapion. Like bread, the social mind doesn't come to life until broken, and it will not break as long as the possibility of normal relation to the world persists.
Unrelatedly: Although this isn't in any of the variora, I'm convinced that Hamlet's "north by northwest" indicates the upstage, i.e., the platform where the royal couple would stand, and south stands for the groundlings in front of him. A sort of universal convention of the stage, for some reason, and perhaps also described that way 400 years ago. And always look for the groundlings-good-cheer lines. There's more of them in there than one might think. As difficult as life might be in the plot, one can always turn to the invisible audience for a bit of good cheer.
Also: hawk/handsaw -- also not in the variora, but these are very similar sounds. (Which might perhaps have embarrassed a nobleman visiting a theatre/worksite when he searched the sky.)
The most distressing thing about the bad people in my country is that even the worst of them are convinced that "it is right to be so." This has to do with the Puritan roots of the country, I think. (Cf. Santayana's apercu in Lat Puritan about the Puritan who was so Puritan, he couldn't be a Puritan.)
So the "we're all in this together" instant rapport of people who lend their moral force on the strength of an idle rumor or two, the placeholders, the Machiavels of middle management (who make up most of the professsariat), all of these social forms are percolating without any sense of duty to good itself, and occasionally explicitly thinking it a historical adversary.
The machine is being run by a small portion of the population, not on a meritocratic basis, but on a best-fit-for-the-role system of ad hoc judgment. The forms of industry ensure prosperity for a solid preponderance, a much higher percentage than in the past, but if you take the platitudes and nostrums of the society to be even an indication of the actual goals of the society, you won't do well. The success of the machine is in what it makes; the success of the society is in how well it preserves and develops the humanity of each person within it.
Hilary Term.
Phos hilaron....
Once you realize that it would be impossible to hold the events in your life in your mind at the same time as the generally held notions of the way things are (material contradiction in essence -- every change is negation, but I could easily hold a notion of the world with one less snowflake in my mind), there's a choice to be made. And if you're one of the few to choose rightly (not correctly), it's important to further realize that it's a fool's errand to be the world's notion of the sort of person who thinks the world to be false. Clear category error, as they say. When you exit the matrix, do so without residue.
Worthless day. For some reason, the books didn't arrive from the stacks, so I had only the background reading. Thick mental fog most of the day, still trying to figure out the reason. And for some reason, the folks sitting nearby were, more than once, of the non-non-creepy ilk.
Was going to stay and work at the branch library across the street, but when the mind is in an unexplained fog, best to switch coordinates. The whole reason I'm here is that I know these places rather well after 20 years. If the plane goes down, try to land in the right briar patch.
Extraordinary mind fog this AM, returning in the afternoon, after I burned off the morning banks with the reading.
Possibly physical/contagion, coming off of a few days of rare congestion and fatigue; possibly the weather, as the winter cold and winds returned last night.
It's a bit like a painter fighting off blindness -- bold, strong strokes of the mind might help to clear the fog, but they don't always serve the work itself, or the day.
Simply as an accident of how things transpired (sudden drop-off in remote work, quick exit from the Balkans, then to ground in a city where I'd certainly rather not be, but one with which I'm very familiar after a couple of decades), I find myself constantly not just trying to get back over there, but mentally still there, in a way. I will read a chapter or two of philosophy, and then it's as if I'm standing on a street in Belgrade or Skopje. As if normal, productive life ended there.
The mornings, when I first sit down to work after the workout, Mass, breakfast and lectio, are difficult. As if I'm a barge on a river, weaving through immense foggy walls of sleep, Occasionally, I'll look up and see a repeated keystroke filling the screen, and realize that Lethe had had me for a bit. (I'm not sure how much being surrounded by other has to do with this difficulty.)
There are, of course gigs similar to the one that funded the pilgrimage, but this work is not exactly a straightforward meritocracy. For that matter, I have the qualifications in law and theatre after years of work, and almost a research doctorate, but... the same caveat applies.
So I have the projects that I'm working on, using the world-class library while I have it, and I keep looking for the foothold that help me find an 'internal exile' place with basic first-world provisions, but I'm increasingly thinking that I should be aiming abroad. Given both my specific situation and the larger picture, the Republic might prove uncongenial. The work is the point.
Eavesdropping at the NY Philharmonic via the lobby Jumbotron again.
Beginning with the Tchaikovsky first piano concerto. (Not the Monty Python version.) The soloist attempting to outshine in the manner of the composer, starched collar and rumpled linen, staring fixedly at the keys, perhaps some of the scents of the incense of Valaam monastery still in his coat.
A concerto is fundamentally dualistic -- in Mozart, it is a contest of virtuosity, in Beethoven, a political argument between the one and the many. But Tchaikovsky surrounds his soloist with an orchestra already versed in the Romantic, marinated in years of the repertory of the Bolshoi or the Mariinski, even the third chair second violin is accorded deference in the restaurants.
When the soloist wanders off on a fugue or a fantasy, the orchestra waits, confident in its massed strength. The wanderer will return from his woodpath. Which, of course, only prompts the wanderer further and further up the lonely mountain trail.
Unlike the battle for virtuosity in Mozart, or the battle of Napoleonic brothers in Beethoven, the orchestra, in the hands of the playful one, is playful. Themes bounced back and forth, a quick crescendo in the manner of a lion's playful roar. We are safe inside the massed tones of the Romantic -- this is the enchanted snow-globe where the notes hover and drift above and between them. Inside this safety, the soloist is alternately brash and playfully cloying. The venerable orchestra of the old Russian theatre is a force he has known since childhood, an old alliance as familiar as his brandy-scented uncles at the candle-lit table, a clean place of warmth and camphor-scented dry air from the heating, against the slush and mud of the northern winter outside. He knows this faerie band of old, and, with the confidence of Meister Eckhart playing his puppet theatre, he leads them on.
And then, the massed forces of the orchestra fall silent, and the piano, slowly at first, and then with a quickening boldness, begins to fill the air of the filled theatre with sound. That same theatre of his childhood is now his own. He returns the gift.
Afterwards, an encore, irrepressible, he launches into a furious playing of Liszt, the Campanella. The low tones sounded with a soft touch, but the bright ring of the topmost ostinato ringing out like an alarm. A string breaks on the sounding board, and there is nervous laughter in the crowd. Like the moment in The Cherry Orchard when the unseen string snaps, there is at first a careless abandon, almost a liberation, the 19th c. equivalent of smashing the guitar on the stage so that it will never play a lesser show, but then a sort of rueful, almost apologetic grin as he fingers the steel thread. He has broken his toy again. But they will buy him another one.
After the interval, Shostakovich contra Stalin. The present politics offering perhaps a clear analogy, a populist leader with revanchist taste in the arts, high honors being doled out to the Phantom of the Opera, Cats, and country music stars. Against this, a cosmopolitanism, an obscurantism. It might win the hall, but one will have to go back to the apartment afterward, and the Bakelite telephone on the lace tablecloth on the small table by the door may ring.
The first theme of the first movement commanding, insistent, repeated tones of warlike urgency. But then the strings bring in a second theme, a wandering, indecisive random walk, like someone wandering through the snowy streets in confusion. The menace of the beginning returns, somehow less glorious now that we have a sense of a wandering soul trapped inside that world.
Brecht: "Will there be music inside the dark times? Yes, there will be music about the dark times."
And then the cacophanous blurring of the glorious noises, and a lone bassoon returns to the theme of the wandering soul. It is the anti-concerto -- the many are not there to hear the one, the one hopes to survive the terrors of the many. Another small cacophony, and an even lower reed takes up the cause of the wandering one, perhaps wandering deeper into the shadow. In his box, the President sighs in some frustration, waiting for the heroic theme from the horns, or perhaps a falling chandelier. The wandering theme now in the bass tuba, approaching nadir. A bright theme emerges in woodwinds, perhaps the hangers-on of the battle shouting playfully in the streets. The massed strings quietly echoing in pizzicato, like hundreds listening from behind quivering curtains in the city. And then the nervous, frantic theme from the violins, souls ennervated almost to the madness which we begin to hear in the echoes of the cellos and basses. Surreptitiously, the flutists slip earplugs in against the wall of sound that now rises from the back of the ensemble, the crashing mechanical shadow of the infantry arrived. Then, oddly, a precise and measured sonata-form of well-phrased music, but played with trepidation and fear. Life appearing to continue. Despite it all. The horns sound the fatal theme without melody, simply the repeated terrifying tones, until like Frankenstein's monster, they begin to fashion a primitive melody with the same force.
As if in answer to the Volgon melodies of the threatening horns, the concertmaster intones a low lament, no longer the breathing of the wanderer that we heard in the reeds, but the song of that which is within him. And then his breaths, and his journey continue, walking through the snowy city, searching, as high above, the composer takes his turn at the observation post, binoculars in hand,
The various sounds of the city emerge, in obscure, cosmopolitan fashion. The wanderer is multiplied into many, then dozens, then hundreds. Sirens sound, both near and far off. The traffic of the city returns, hard to discern from the rumbling of the tanks from the battle before. The well-formed sonata retuns, played with the same uncertain and nervous gait. The President, in his box, shoots a querulous look at a terrified aide. On the old stage, the orchestra plays out the theme like a madman convinced of the genius of his interpretation. The horns return with a theme that a dark soul might think heroic. And then, briefly, the breath of the lone wanderer reflected in the reeds.
Only the briefest hesitation, and then the next movement begins with the wanderer's breathing made melodic, merged with the song within him that we heard the concertmaster earlier intone. The battle-worn soul has found a small charm against the night. The heroic horns, now emerging fully formed from the brow of Minerva, seem to drown out all other song. But the strings, the many, not the crowd, but the populace, begin to sound, and then take up the tempo suggested by the wanderer's song. The dictator, restless in his box, begins to sense that there won't be enough time for things to turn back to victorious themes of past greatness and the praise of famous men. Stubbornly, like a broken metronome pushing forward through time, the strings persist, not with the charm of the single soul, but the faceless force of the crowd, then in open conflict with the horns, evocative of the condemnation of till Eulenspiegel or perhaps the incident at Kent State. The people advance, but not in the manner of being led by heroes and presidents, but like rising water, persistently filling the streets despite the tyrant's scourges. With encouraging whistles to each other in the flutes, the strings again asssy their well-formed melody with increased confidence. Every continuation without the heroic crash of the infantry intruding is a day won, a quiet victory of the spirit, a Sarajevo soul having survived the snipers and made it home to dinner.
It is a paean to the people, but not one the leaders of state socialism could ever have embraced. The people are an entity that existed before the journey to communism began, and they will survive the time, whatever the nature of the time. The one that is composed of all can never perish. The horns insistently return, perhaps from the west, from German lands. Orderly European civilization filing down the long rows at Bayreuth. Against it, in the motherland of the east, the meandering melodies of the people, nothing glorious, simply a random walk in the fading light. But human.
Line from a soviet movie, in response to the exaggerated German manners (of a double agent) at the table: "We Russians, we might live in sh-t, but we have the truth." And now the crescendo, which partakes mainly of the questionable virtues of the horns, a smile starting to stretch from the corner of the dictator's mouth, to the relief of his aides in the box. But then it peters out into an insistent darkness almost without melody.
Manet nobiscum, Domine quoniam advesperacit.
After two weeks of sloughing through 19th c. law treatises, checking variations between editions, I returned the last of them yesterday evening, and walked into the library this morning, and without even turning on the computer, opened Brandom's Tales of the Mighty Dead (pt. 1), and sat there, almost without moving, for a few hours, as my mind slowly came back to life.
If I had my druthers, I'd be making theatre; second druthers would be reading and writing philosophy. The other work and scholarship is simply an attempt to play the game that I seem not to have drafted to play, despite the expensive preparations. The gates of the law, Kafka called them.
That said, I can still write, and I think I have an interesting angle on this latest legal history project, which will undoubtedly taking up disk space on the usual self-publishing outlet at some point in the future.
The Others: "But you see, the proof of our game is that no one will read it."
To which I reply: "Quod scripsit, scripsit. Enjoy your game."
---
Listening to the Christmas Eve chant from Valaam while reading Enlightenment philosophy is enlightening. It's good to read books that assume that the mind is wide open to God, and also good to be reminded that the water is still very much, as they say, wide.
There is much in this pining for places where I recently had sufficient means and sustenance to read, work and think. (Though the trireme survival freelance work that flew in through the transom was exhausting.) After many years of increasingly difficult circumstances, fighting many questionable people, the ability to secure a basic existence is beginning to show signs of becoming an existential question.
Travel bath brush starting to look a bit ragged. Might have to go back to the hardware chain in Serbia/Montenegro for a replacement.
And if you think I wouldn't go halfway around the planet for a decent bath brush, you might be underestimating both me and the utility of a a really decent bath brush. I actually prefer the German ones, but the wood doesn't travel well. This is a detachable unit with a thin metal rod handle. Perhaps $6.
Pining for Zemun, today actually. Had a very decent place for writing there for about a fortnight, sublet from a local jazz/funk musician. (Missed the gig he invited me to, as I was writing.) Old Austro-Hungarian architecture, Catholic churches and monasteries mixed with the Orthodox.
Why I am pining for North Macedonia
Of the places that I visited and lived in during those two years or so, Skopje wasn't the most pleasant. My ATM card and prepaid card didn't work, so I had to Western Union money to myself. The housing was inexpensive, but predictably noisy, as across the street from a large elementary school and playground. I caught the vibe of the city rather quickly -- a monumentalism that made interesting things to look at, but not really places to dwell or wander. There was an interesting new music concert at the new philharmonic hall one night with a pan-Yugoslavian group, and a few English-language bookstores (but, peculiarly, missing translations from the local language), and everyone was very friendly, but the main advantage of the place was a small study with a big desk that I moved to underneath a large window, a place to read, and think, and write. The housing of the city is almost entirely relatively new, rebuilt after the earthquake in the 1960s (some interesting photos in the museums). Large concrete colonies, very similar to the housing in coastal Montenegro, with substantial retail and restaurants on the ground floor of most buildings, in addition to the half-dozen or so local malls. Across the river, in the historical Muslim quarter, things were very different, but aside from some nighttime peregrinations across the bridges, I lived in the new city. The cathedral is new, and nice -- a very puzzling structure has been raised on the old cathedral site to honor the local saint of recent times.
For none of these things am I pining, though. There is something else. On a few weekday nights, I heard music coming from what was clearly an outdoor performance nearby. Gandalf rose from his desk and wandered down into the village. The concert setup was the universal box stage, lights and sound, apparently now rentable in any city anywhere in the world. But the square was filled with the people who lived in the concrete semi-brutalist housing above, all the businesses open and thriving, including the bookstore with coffee, outside of which I set up with an Americano. Apparently, not so much a unique event, but the festival customary to some summer evenings. (Being there in summer was important -- I have been in Balkan cities with similar pollution issues from temperature inversion, and it can be a trial.)
I was beguiled.
The standard of living in the Balkans is thuoght to be low, because there's not much money involved, but the first sign that I caught that the economic analysis might not capture the true view was noticing that the cities in Romania cleared out on weekends and holidays, when everyone went to their second homes. It is possible to live well on less money than cycles through households in the West, when living well involves a solid supply of basic things, and not extravagant expenses for the latest devices. (For some reason, October in rural Bulgaria comes to mind, as the streets and paths near the houses begin to fill with cords of chopped firewood for the winter.
The point of living well is to allow people to be human, and engage in the work of human beings, and have the modest and gentle leisure that even an economically challenged society can furnish. Understandably, the apartments above in the semi-brutalist aren't filled with philosophy, given that that sort of thing was forced on them in the context of the last empire, with agitprop priced at cost. But mine would be.
The difficulty with my own culture reaches deeper than the economically-intensive notions of the good life. After the industrialization subsequent to the second world war, the sense of civilizational context in the context of daily experience has almost completely dropped away. The trucks of frozen hamburgers roll in weekly, and people take their sense of reality from their televisions. As a result, and this is somewhat difficult to express, when I go to a coffeehouse and have a coffee, I have very little sense of the civilizational context that this event is happening within. It is simply a corporation raised to furnish coffee at a certain price, as it might anywhere in the world there was money to be made, and we make the transaction in the manner of old Scottish shopkeepers, and I sit down and drink my coffee.
(I actually tended to patronize Western coffeehouses when I was in the Balkans, but that was primarily because I much prefer counter service to table service when dealing with unknown folks in different cultures.)
Even so, many people in my country wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about here -- coffee is coffee, and one is friendly to the local business-folks, get the coffee, and sits down and enjoys it. But the festival evening with some consciousness of the civilizational context is very different. In the corporate form, coffee is served, no matter who you are, and who the business is. A neighborhood business in a small country, though, makes the coffee as an exercise in nation-creation. They would be shocked (if not surprised) to find bad things going on in their own country, and this would have to do with the coffeehouse in the evenings. On the contrary, in the corporate context, unconscionable things could be going on on the street outside while the barista was pouring the coffee, and no one would bat an eye.
Industrial prosperity for significantly more than a preponderance of the people can be achieved by using only a percentage of the population, and treating a small subset very badly. The danger is that these industrial structures (artistic, academic, professional) can be taken over by syndicates -- this isn't as categorically evil as it might sound -- a syndicate, in the 19th century, was the customary means of dealing with the outside world under the corporate seal -- some university press workers are still referred to as "syndics". But when these factions govern the effective mechanisms of industry as factions, they think it a duty to govern without a sense of justice, or at least not an iota of it beyond the requirements of the positive law. As a result, extraordinary injustices can result when people don't go along with some of the questionable practices. I was a professional stage actor for over a decade with a strong conservatory degree, and then every opportunity vanished for a few years; I earned a top-tier law doctorate while taking as many doctrinal courses as possible, and then passed two bar exams unassisted, and found no work; I wrote a 300 page research doctorate dissertation while grading up to 4,000 papers per year and the requested defense wasn't scheduled. I had worked as a professional in the field in NYC for a decade and had the law degree, but there were no opportunities to collaborate or teach at the large state university other than the remote electronic grading.
I'd like to think that all of these things would be thought deeply troubling in a coffeehouse with a civilizational context. In the corporate model, I merely have the $3.76 required for a small cup of coffee from time to time. And this would be bad enough, if the story ended in a humble concrete apartment lined with paperback books of philosophy. But the syndicates of my country play rougher games than that. One is simply put to the street, excluded from the common life.
So I pine for these concrete brutalist apartments that would afford the possibility of reading, thought, and work. The streets are cold in the northern cities, and the corporatist culture continues to dominate the minds of the people through television and music.