Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Crack It Up!
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Nobel Prizes and Noble Gases
Monday, November 28, 2022
Strange World
Don Hall's Strange World may be the first Oedipal environmental animation. The generations and struggles of a nuclear family are equated with the ages of a planet very much like earth. Within the family context Jaeger Clade (the voice of Dennis Quaid) is the explorer always looking for more while his son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal) represents the nesting or agrarian impulse. In Candide, Voltaire famously says "we must cultivate our garden." Needless to say the plot is rife with tensions leading to a separation. Add to that, Jaeger's grandson Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White) who turns out to be both mixed race and gay. The fact that Strange World is a classic children's oriented Disney product, featuring creatures with names like Spat, ironically facilitates the poetry. The modus operandi is the saving of Pando, the fuel which is the lifeblood of Avalonia, the world which is the product of this life force. The twist is that the "planet" is dying from the very thing that keeps is supposed to be keeping it alive. Read fossil fuels and insecticides. The movie, reminiscent of Journey to the Center of the Earth envisions its own subterranean continent that looks like a heart (replete with valves), but also functions as the unconscious, ultimately allowing the characters a uniquely inside/out view of their own lives.
read "Died Young" by Francis Levy, The Brooklyn Rail
and watch the trailer for the animation of Erotomania
Friday, November 25, 2022
Turkey a Postmortem
Is your Thanksgiving Day turkey the elephant in the room? Inflation has raised the price of turkey. If you had perchance been in the market for turkey or even reliable old turkey parts like breast thighs and wings before the current season you might have come away empty-handed. The mixture of the pandemic and the demand that is both the cause and symptom of inflation disrupted the supply chain. In Animal Farm the pig, Napoleon famously says, “all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.” Plainly turkeys are getting the short end of the stick. However, what would you rather be desired then dead or alive and totally alone? It’s one of the paradoxes of the market place that those creatures which are source of pleasure are always more in danger of being exploited.And that applies to humans too. If you’re wanted you’ll end up becoming someone’s meal. When you stop being of use, you’ll end up being sent out to pasture.
read "Diasporic Dining: Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" by Francis Levy, HuffPost
and you probably can't get enough of "Young Americans" by David Bowie
Thursday, November 24, 2022
Black Monday-Friday
wild turkey (Frank Schulenburg) |
Amidst the horror of the Club Q killings was the heroic account of Richard Fierro, the Iraq Afghanistan vet who rushed the gunman. It was a tale of heroism shared with another club patron, but what’s also interesting is the demographic. Fierro had come with his wife and daughter to watch a drag show. Fierro has described in interviews how his combat training kicked in. The gunman Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, was allowed to purchase his AR-15 despite the fact that he'd recently been in a stand-off with police in which he had threatened to use a bomb. In addition, he was born Nicholas Brink and asked a Texas court to change his name when he was 15, due to his father’s criminal past. After kicking Aldrich’s rifle away, he pistol- whipped the assailant with one of his weapons; The problem was the body armor. Fierro had to find “a crease,” which he succeeded in doing. His tale exuded an extraordinary mixture of vengeance and compassion. He choked up when he described to CNN how his family underwent the kind of combat experience (he might have had during one of his 4 tours) and which they shouldn’t have been forced to experience on a night out. Five people died including Fierro’s daughter’s boyfriend, Raymond Green Vance. Before there was time to experience any gratitude for the bravery which saved so many lives, Americans woke up on the day before Thanksgiving to read about the killing of 6 patrons in Chesapeake by the manager of a Walmart.
read "Pedestalization" by Francis Levy, HuffPost
and listen to "Young Americans" by David Bowie
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Dismembership
In the current climate do you frequently wish that this or that demagogue were dead? Why won’t Putin simply topple over, like a bust of Stalin tumbling from its pedestal during Glasnost? Why can’t some spy infiltrate the kitchen at the Kremlin and give him some of his own medicine, ie the Novichok that felled Navalny? Wishing dismemberment, "extreme rendition"(waterboarding) or “termination with extreme prejudice” (the CIA name for assassination) is fast becoming the lingua franca of political discourse. “Off with their heads,” says Captain Hook. Remember the mythology about Lavoisier wagging his tongue after being guillotined? In South Africa and later Tunisia there were Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that set out to deal with the legacy of brutal regimes in remarkably humane and enlightened ways. However, now dreams of vengeance supplant attempts to look at murder and genocide as a form of psychosis. “Macbeth hath murdered sleep.” The Russians have hired mercenaries, alumnae of the Syrian repression to bolster their flagging armies. Each human rights transgression rachets up the rage. Napalm, agent orange, germ warfare, mustard gas, drones, heat seeking missiles, tactical nuclear weapons--the imagination is more inventive in devising brutal means of annihilation than in conjuring forgiveness.
read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn
and listen to "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye
Tuesday, November 22, 2022
Property
Temporary Elgin Room at British Museum by Archibald Archer (1819) |
Who owns what is a sticky question. It comes up in reference to intellectual property, in specific, art. Rothko sells a painting for $2000 in his lifetime and the proceeds of a later sale amounting to millions totally elude the creator or his heirs. Imagine if Shakespeare's estate had renewed their copyrights? This gets even more complicated in the case of indigenous work. Will the English finally return the Elgin Marbles to Greece? Talk about decolonization, will the Vatican deacquisition its Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum, a collection of indigenous art? Ultimately no one owns anything. Those who think they're buying a “co-op” are delusional. They're really long-term renters since someone else will own it some day—by definition. Politics+property=war. The equation defines modernity, with civil wars in Yemen and Bosnia deriving not only from culture but provenance. Who was there first? You might have to go back to the Big Bang and before that an ether or vacuum, to answer that question.
read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn
and listen to China Girl" by David Bowie
Monday, November 21, 2022
Athens or Rome?
Will the Old or New Testament prevail when the Republicans take over the house? Will the ethos or culture of capital hill be an eye for an eye or turn the other cheek? In "Culture and Anarchy," Mathew Arnold differentiated between the Hellenic and Hebraic, "spontaneity of consciousness" versus "strictness of conscience." Athens and Rome the seats of the pagan or classical versus Christian culture will also infuse the debate. But in chess terms are the current tight margins of victory a recipe for endgame or stalemate? Of course, the Babylonian captivity in which the papacy was moved to Avignon, the age of Augustus and then Constantine all come into play. Not to mention the Napoleonic Code in which you’re guilty until proven innocent. The pressure cooker doesn’t just explode overnight. “History is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake” say Stephen Daedalus. Though it sometimes seems like the End of History a la Francis Fukuyama or Ideology (Daniel Bell), even the most cohesive of social contracts is comprised of competing agendas. One can only hope that a divisive society in which opposing sides adhere to Manicheans vision of good and evil like the one that exists in the United States today will at least be tempered by the synthesis of Hegelian dialectic.
read "Lincoln" by Francis Levy, HuffPost
and listen to "Changes" by David Bowie
Friday, November 18, 2022
The Lost Age of Hype
Sam Cohn |
Thursday, November 17, 2022
CNNese
“All happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The famous Tolstoy quote might be applied to CNN newscasters. They’re all alike, except for John King whose words tumble out of his mouth like bullets from a Gatling gun--and Michael Smerconish who inhabits the 9AM Saturday slot and feigns humanity. If you’re a CNN viewer you’re definitely unhappy. Though you may share the anti-MAGA sentiment, you don’t like the Orwellian Newspeak in which most information is conveyed. The root of Esperanto is hope, but that of Newspeak is well simply... the need to put an accent on literally every prefix or suffix. The suffix accenting is suffocating. CNNs reporting on inflation may be stultifying, Siennese aka CNNease is a little like Jack Torrance’s “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Back in the days of Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings there was at least the feeling your anchor was alive and kicking. The local CBS ll’o’clock news does provide a respite in the form of the weatherman Lonnie Quinn, whose favorite line is, “back to you Kristine and Maurice.” Say no more. Does Berlitz teach a course for aspiring newscasters? What if everyone talked this way? It’s a little like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where all the pods have hollow eyes and intone the same monotonous dirge. Imagine coming home for dinner one night to find your partner turned into Wolf Blitzer, John Berman or Kate Bolduan or those party animals in the 6AM slot, Poppy Harlow, Don Lemon and Kaitlan Collins?
read "The Campus Un-American Activities Committee" by Francis Levy, HuffPost
and watch the trailer for Erotomania
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Mad Men (and Women)
Abrams Main Battle Tank at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune |
Have you seen the TV ads for Bentcarrot.com, the site that touts Xiaflex, the only known medication for Peyronie’s disease? You may have noted that those who take the drug are also urged to exercise their penises. Explanation will be found on the insert. Then there’s Cyndi Lauper touting Cosentyx for psoriasis. Is this what happens to “Girls Who Just Want to Have Fun?” Ice-T has of course made a career out of his advertisements for Car Shield which are now set in the Barbershop of Ice Cube fame. But what about getting Annie Lennox of “Walking on Breaking Glass” fame to do commercials for the windows division of Anderson replacement? Did you serve at Camp Lejeune from l953-87? Are you a victim of Mesotelioma? You may be eligible for the proceeds from a $35 billion dollar trust. Only you're unlikely to receive any money after your ambulance chaser gets paid.
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
The Novelist's Film
In Hong Sang-soo’s The Novelist’s Film, now playing at the Bunin, a famous novelist, Jun-hee (Lye Hye-young), visits another writer, the proprietor of a bookstore/teashop who declares “I don’t write anymore. I doubt if I will do it again” They are joined by another woman who has given up acting to study sign language with which she renders, “The day is still bright, but soon it grows dark." In another encounter the novelist describes herself as lacking in "charisma," employing the word in its English form. The fungibility of languages is an early subplot that foreshadows the promiscuous bartering of lives (a child peering into a shop window is a proto-voyeur). Jun-hee meets a director she hasn’t seen in years. Neither have read or seen each other’s most recent book or movie and vie for attention. All of the characters long for something they don't have and all attempt to get it in awkward encounters--in particular, the one between the novelist and a famous actress Gil-soo (Kim Min-hee) with whom she collaborates on the "novelist's film." There's a web of minutiae which make up what's essentially a palette of creative forms. With the exception of one scene, The Novelist's Film is shot in black and white. The movie is comprised almost entirely of slow pans in and out; the claustrophobic settings mirroring the isolation of these dreamers. The scale of The Novelist's Film is much smaller than either Ryusuke Hameguchi's Drive My Car or Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, two recent offerings from major Korean directors, but one can't help remarking on the self-reflexivity and concern with artistic process that characterizes the work of all three directors. The current renaissance of Korean cinema is reminiscent of the great era of Japanese directors like Ozu, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa.
Monday, November 14, 2022
Quantum Entanglements
Stephanie Burt, the poet and Harvard professor used to be Stephen Burt. So, it’s not surprising she's interested in the Multiverse ("The Never-Ending Story," The New Yorker, 11/7/22). In fact isn’t “transitioning” akin to entering an alternate or parallel universe where another form of the same self exists? It’s also a principle of quantum mechanics that a particle can be in two places at the same time. The “unreliable narrator” is a device used by many writers, but Jorge Luis Borges might be called the Ur “transitioning” narrator. Borges’ story within a story is to fiction what Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is to quantum mechanics. Burt quotes from one of the Argentinian writer’s most famous works, “The Garden of Forking Paths” thusly: “This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us.” In the meanwhile, the question is, which pronoun to use?
Friday, November 11, 2022
Setting the Timer
Hourglass (Metropolitan Museum of Art) |
The thing about time is that like distance it can be divided into infinitely smaller gradations. This phenomenon is most evident when you’re late for an appointment and waiting for a traffic light to change. A minute seems much longer than it would were you savoring the last few minutes before having to say goodbye to a friend or relative. Zeno’s paradox of course demonstrates the comparative elasticity of distance. Would that time were like the needle stuck in an old-fashioned vinyl record. The end of life presents a paradoxical problem that takes the form of boredom. Retirees tend to have lots of time on their hands even though they have relatively little time left to live. The biggest excitement is finally stepping off the High Dive. In the earlier stages of life, time flies, with life slipping through the fingers like a fish frantically struggling to free itself from one's grasp. The party seems to be ending before it started. You may remember a romantic night, made all the more precious by the subliminal awareness of how fleeting it would end up being.
read "Lamb Stewed" by Francis Levy, Dispatches From the Poetry Wars
and listen to "Time is On My Side" by The Rolling Stones
Thursday, November 10, 2022
The Spiritual Life of Voters
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by Emile Durkheim and The Spiritual Life of Children by Robert Coles might offer explanations for the surprising turn of the midterm elections. The result which are far closer than anyone expected discountenance the notion that an esoteric idea like democracy no longer has meaning for the electorate. The Democrats were chastised for the not sticking to the bread and butter issues, inflation and crime which comprised the Republican message. Can a concept like “due process” have any relevance with crime rising in streets and prices going up at the gas pump? One of the essential tenets of Democracy, central to the notion of "checks and balances," is that reason can tame appetite. Trump’s Polonius to Laertes style advice to Blake Masters to say the election was “rigged and stolen," a direct attack on democracy itself, did not turn out to be the winning formula for the Republican senate hopeful. What Democracy has in common with the spiritual life is that it’s an idea that traffics in intangibles that are, like “inalienable rights,” sometimes counterintuitive. The results of the midterm elections vindicate the notion that “political man” cannot live by bread alone.
read "God Redux" by Francis Levy, HuffPost
and listen to "Police State" by Pussy Riot
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
Rambunctiousness: A Philosophy
read "Dr. Pangloss?" by Francis Levy, HuffPost
and listen to "Shotgun"by Jr. Walker & The All Stars
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
Diasporic Dining: Beyond Tongue
Monday, November 7, 2022
Jonathan Lethem's "Narrowing Valley"
read "Transcendentalwasm" by Francis Levy, HuffPost
and listen to "(I'm Just a) Love Machine" by The Miracles
Friday, November 4, 2022
The Biggest Apple
Chisato Iwasaki |
The biggest apple ever, weighed 4lb 1oz. It was grown by Chisato Iwasaki in Hirosaki City during 2005. An apple of that size could definitely be mistaken for a pumpkin if it weren’t for the reddish hue. This is the kind of problem Swift takes on in Gulliver’s Travels. The Big Apple would just be just another piece of fruit in Brobdingnag but lethal if it fell on the head of a Lilliputians. Julia Child was an exceptionally tall celebrity chef who towered over her husband. Kenneth Galbraith, the economist, towered over his colleagues and Wilt Chamberlain, was 7'1."The Burj Khalifa in Dubai at 2717 feet is the tallest building in the world. The record for eating hotdogs is held by Joey Chestnut--66 hotdogs and buns in 12 minutes. Jeanne Calment of France who died in l997 lived to be 122 years old.
read "Sarcasm" by Francis Levy, HuffPost
and listen to "Mr. Big Stuff" by Jean Knight
Thursday, November 3, 2022
If These Apples Should Fall
In a TLS review of Cezanne by Achim Borchardt-Hume et al and T.J. Clark’s If These Apples Should Fall, attendant upon the Tate Modern show, Gabriel Josipovici remarks: “For the danger each time is that by communicating the incommunicable, you lose the sense of its incommunicability.” A still life is known as nature morte. But reading Josipovici’s essay one is reminded Cezanne’s famous apples are forbidden fruit. In describing Cezanne, Jossipovici invokes "the egotistical sublime," "the phrase Keats used of Wordsworth." The essay is full of locutions that add to the mystery and in some way is an ambitious undertaking in and of itself recalling seminal works like Roger Fry's Cezanne A Study of His Development (1927). “It is not what the artist wants but what the work wants that in the end drives it to its conclusion,” comments Josipovici. And here is a quote from Merleau-Ponty’s “Le doute de Cezanne” which Josipovici draws upon in examining the phenomenological effect of Cezanne’s revolutionary work, “Nature itself is denuded of those attributes that prepare her for animistic communion: the landscape without wind, the water of Lake Annecy without movement, the objects frozen hesitant as though at the origin of the universe.”
read "Inventing Abstraction at MoMA" by Francis Levy, HuffPost
and watch the trailer for Erotomania
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
The Ethicist: One Man's Pleasure
Dear Ethicist:
I have a friend who’s a real humanist. In fact, he’s a card carrying member of the Humane Society and is all in when it comes to protesting the horrible conditions that go along with industrial pig and chicken production. He doesn’t find “Where’s the Beef?” funny even though you can often find him at Burger King where he's a big fan of The Impossible Whopper. Animal rights are his mantra, but human beings can can say one thing and do another. One man’s pleasure is another’s pain. Thus I'm always perplexed about what to do when I see him rolling his basset hound's ears up in a little ball. The animal whimpers, but my friend doesn't realize he's torturing his pet. I'm not the only one who's been disconcerted by the sight of my friend in front of a roaring fire at his country estate, drinking brandy from an oversized snifter with one hand, while pulling that poor animal’s ears (and naturally the legs of all those around him). What to do? If I tell him he will feel humiliated and aghast. If I remain silent, I'm complicit in animal abuse, which is a felony in most states. Am I no better than one of those hunters who shoot rhinoceros for taxidermic purposes? Should I even turn myself in, though my friend himself is so clueless that he doesn’t realize anything is wrong?
Name Withheld
Hi, The real question goes back to why you're friends with this person in the first place. It’s fun to be around would-be aristocrats who have hounds which give chase to their quarry, but grow up. It’s 2022. This isn’t Tom Jones and even the most pretentious country gentleman is more likely to travel by Uber than horse.
read "The Ethicist: Warning Signs, TheScreamingPope
listen to "Dogg Pound" by Snoop Dogg
Tuesday, November 1, 2022
The Aristocracy of Boredom
The Romanovs (1913) |
Is there a lot happening despite what you may be thinking or feeling? Boredom is a deceptive emotion since as unpleasant as it is, it’s a little the like the almost curative state of shock experience after an accident. The same applies to emptiness. There's comfort in feeling one’s life is an empty place, with the imagination a desolate Hopper street corner. In fact, the unconscious is like an angry Jacobin mob. There's so much potential danger lurking between the forces of eros and agape that without a "reverse endorphin rush," the dreamer might find themselves in another nightmare--standing naked in the middle of a highway with traffic threatening to expose their innermost "secrets and lies," right before they're turned to roadkill. The person who finds themselves wandering in no man’s land is like the last of the Romanovs blithely ignorant of the revolution at their doorsteps.
read "Diasporic Dining: Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" by Francis Levy, HuffPost
and listen to "Make America Great Again" by Pussy Riot