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Death Scenes (670 words)
El Camarón de la Isla was a Gypsy, Flamenco singer. With Paco de Lucia, the founder of the ‘new Flamenco’ & though a junkie all of his life was also a universally loved national hero- considered by many, the best Flamenco singer of the latter half of the twentieth century. He died of cancer in 1992 at the age of 42. His last words were: “Mamá que es lo que me pasa?” (Mommy, what is wrong with me?)
Here in Spain, just as it continues to be in many countries of the world, the standard protocol is that the doctor who has diagnosed a terminal illness will tell the patient’s family but not the patient & in many cases the patient’s family also choose not to tell the afflicted he is dying.
Even television shows with certain pretensions to intelligent dialogue like Hugh Laurie’s Dr House or Bones, almost without exception, show the same death scene over & over again.
House’s team tell a father his 20 year old son is suffering from massive radiation poisoning & will, without doubt whatever, be dead in a few days. The last scene of the episode is the father holding his boy’s hand reassuring him he will be alright. The boy asks his father twice to please tell him the truth but the father insists on his lie; fade to black.
Bones: A young girl dying of a cancer that has metastasized through her whole body; Angela, the artist on the Jeffersonian Institute’s team, sits with her on a park bench outside the hospital, the young girl: “But I’ve never kissed a boy” Angela: “You will, I promise”.
Neither of these shows or any of the countless others in series or feature films, that show variations of the same scene, go on to show the final death agonies or the reaction of those left alive.
I guess the reasoning is that telling the dying person the truth will remove his hope &, therefore, the quality of the little life he has left. It is better to pretend truth is false than ruin his last days with the certitude of his actual situation.
I imagine the scene after the sick person dies where all his loved ones turn from his body in tears, having to live the rest of their lives with the fact their last days with the deceased were based on a lie.
Not to mention the fact their insincerity, while giving false hope, removes all hope of the dying going through Kübler-Ross' five stage process from: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression to acceptance, i.e. to make peace with reality before fading into pain or opiate induced oblivion.
I can also imagine that the opportunity for the victim to share in the feelings of empathy those close to him actually feel is a pleasure denied him by their having to hide the fact they feel grief in order to support the lie he isn’t in fact dying.
If we switch our attention to the survivors of the personal tragedy they also suffer by being obliged to talk with the dying loved one of a future they know doesn’t exist instead of a shared past they would enjoy remembering together, i.e. saying goodbye.
The fear most feel at the contemplation of their imminent death is, likewise, a feeling the one living it would like to discuss with his loved ones for the value their emotional support (they care) has in helping him through the five stages to acceptance. Those who sit at his death-bed cannot offer him this support because they must instead deny the real fear the dying feel, in order to keep up the lie he is not dying & therefore has no right to feel fear.
Am I lacking in some basic psychological understanding that has me suspecting an egotism on the part of the survivors that is the real motivation to their not telling? That it is because it is easier for them than the dying to withstand the loss by denying it?
addendum- 18th of November (430 words)
Having left the thoughts above with a question, I asked it of a psychologist friend but she had no insight to contribute. I considered the possibility it might be a cultural point of view, maybe informed by religion, but cannot find similarity enough in cultures so different that have one protocol or the other. My lingering doubt did, however, lead eventually to a thought that might have significance.
No one but a doctor is called on so often to deliver the news of imminent death & for certain specialists like say, an oncologist or cardiologist, it becomes part of their regular routine. A doctor needn’t feel empathy or engage the patient on an emotional level in order to be a good doctor & a surgeon might prefer a colleague operate on his daughter for fear his emotional involvement might affect his decision-making adversely (or a wife for fear it affect the emotional bond adveresely).
A good doctor, however, does realize that though it be a routine moment to him it might be the most devastating in a life-time to the diagnosed. A good doctor is prepared, he studies & devises the best way of avoiding insensitivity without emotional commitment- while the family of the dying have no such training.
Could it be that because the family given the responsibility of deciding whether or not to tell a loved one, are emotional as well as untrained, they react to the news in much the same way as the terminally ill does (with denial) but don’t get a chance to go through the other four stages to acceptance because despite their empathy they aren’t the ones actually dying?
This could explain the reactions of the terminally ill patient’s friends or family but still does not explain why a body of practicing medics (such as those of one country or another) would practice a protocol they must know is unhealthy & unjust.
If the patient who hears the news of his limited future decides to spend the time left writing a long letter to his children or in an attempt to climb the North Face, it should be up to him to decide according to the actual criteria.
But then when 'not telling' is practiced as protocol, it is more likely it isn't because the medical body disagrees with the point of view of their colleagues in countries that do tell the patient the truth, but rather because the particular cultural mores relinquish the responsibility of the decision to the family despite the fact the doctor knows there is a better way.
Last thoughts on ‘Death Scenes’- 30th of November (400 words)
When I started the essay titled Death Scenes, I had a few in mind but realised that any more than the two examples I gave would be superfluous. I now want to add the description of a death scene from one of my top three choices of all shows ever made for television: Deadwood. Unlike the other shows I mentioned whose panel of experts help the screenwriters put smart dialogue in their characters’ mouths, Deadwood’s dialogue is exceptional for the way it describes the characters that speak them.
In the first few minutes of the first episode we find a Sheriff alone on a spare set that holds a young man in its cell. We can see the prisoner has no education or moral infrastructure & we might imagine him as the sort who has dedicated half his life to back-breaking labour at low wages & the other half grabbing what he could, when he could, however he could.
The story plays out at night in the room with barred cell, its porch & a dirt road that fades to shadow in the depths. The young Man awaits morning for the death sentence he earned for impulsively & drunkenly stealing a ten dollar horse.
When the owner of the stolen horse arrives at the jail-house heading a lynch mob, the sheriff knows he can’t hold till morning but rather than allow these men to break the law, to assassinate instead of legally execute, he hauls the young man out & hangs him in front of the mob on the porch of the jailhouse.
The mob had surprised the Sheriff & prisoner while the latter was in the middle of Kübbler-Ross’ ‘bargaining’ step in the process toward acceptance of one’s own death. When the time of his execution is brought from 12 hours into the future to the present, to the now, he passes through the three steps restant, one after the other, in a scene of no more than 3 or 4 minutes.
The show is outstanding for various happy reasons (Ian Mc Shane, who I have known all my life as a Cockney antiques dealer from the long-running BBC series for one, deserves a Nobel or at least a Pulitzer for his role!) but the roots that will turn it in time, into a classic, lie in the brilliant dialogue.
Politics II (1170 words)
Since I titled this essay Politics II, you may be wondering where Politics I got to; well, though nothing about my views can be construed as extremist like, for instance, any kind of support or excuse for terrorism 1 of any kind, as soon as I published Politics I the panicked letters from friends & family in the ‘States began to arrive. They worried what might happen to me if ‘the authorities’ (I don’t know, the CIA perhaps? Homeland Security?) got wind of it… at first I found their fears laughable but finally relented & removed the article.
And here I was thinking the U.S. constitution was based in a fundamental way on Voltaire’s principles of free speech 2. Funny those who care about me are more frightened by the possible punitive consequences of what I say than any threat inherent in my saying it.
When I was a gullible kid going to school in the ‘States I believed it when they told me only the evil Soviets lied to their own citizens, tortured their prisoners of war, that Brezhnev (or any of the USSR’s Premieres) would hurt, incarcerate or kill dissenters for simply speaking their mind & that I would not reach puberty if I smoked Marijuana.
The good guys, instead, always fought honourably & respected their enemy like John Wayne who punched hard but not after his opponent had fallen to the ground.
Here in Europe most countries have terrorists & have had for centuries, an unfortunate state of affairs one accepts like the far larger number of unjust deaths caused by say: drunken drivers.
There is no excuse or justification for terrorism against innocent citizens but in Europe we don’t panic. We don’t think we can find & kill the very last person willing to be a terrorist or threaten or dismantle the individual liberties of our citizens in hopes of finding that single e-mail, blog or 'phone call in tens of millions that might lead us to the person having ‘impure thoughts’. Even here in Spain with its outrageously cruel history the Inquisition’s powers were revoked by the beginning of the 19th century.
So now Obama is set to become the world’s most powerful man & I, who normally feel a passionate indifference for politics, am inspired to optimism for the first time in many years.
The part I don’t understand is the attitude toward his being a ‘black’ (of the Negroid race) president. When is society going to evolve beyond the belief in the relevance of the tone 3 of a man’s skin?
If we’re to use the term ‘black’ to describe how the physiognomy of a person might symbolize the culture he represents as we might a man from southern India, who will be far darker in skin tone than that Barack Obama inherited with his mixed racial genes, for example, upon seeing him & without further reference we will start making assumptions about his character & culture. He is likely of the Hindu religion with its cultural, behavioural & philosophical implications. He is likely against violence, he is probably vegetarian & eats with his hands instead of using cutlery, & yet, despite the tone of his skin, he is ‘white’ (of the Caucasoid race)…
But if we then speak to this Indian man we might discover he is a second generation Swede or Rumanian & that his physiognomy is entirely irrelevant to who he is & which culture he belongs to.
I remember when in London my youngest sister, who is from Laos (purchased as infant by my father & his Lao wife for 4000 Kip, about two dollars, from a prostitute who had more children than she wanted) came home from school crying at about twelve years old, she explained between sobs: “The other kids call me nigger”. Aside from incensing my anger like it might any elder brother I was also confused: “But you’re not black, you’re Asian…” (of the Mongoloid race) I later discovered that under U.K. law a black person is defined as non-white (I don’t know if this law is still valid but in certain parts of Britain it is certainly still the common attitude)
In Spain the traditionally poor & socially oppressed are the Gipsies 4 who just like American blacks are responsible for some of the country’s greatest cultural achievements; in Spain: Flamenco 5- in the U.S.: from the African music that came with the slaves through Gospel, Blues, Jazz, Soul to Hip-hop & the roots of all of the western world’s popular music.
So yes, though we finally move toward a healthy merging of cultures it can be said the black American has a culture that differs from American white culture but Barack Obama is not a representative of it while a man like Jesse Jackson or Dexter Gordon might be.
What we should be celebrating aside from Obama’s intelligence, dignity & statesmanship is his multiculturalism, in both genetic terms & that of his personal history because that, gratefully, is the inevitable future of modern man.
In 1993 with the the Maastricht Treaty & founding of the European Union began a process where countries with isolated cultures became less picturesque for the camera toting tourist but the blurring of borders & freedom of movement between countries began merging cultures in a way that will happen globally within a near future of maybe a hundred years.
It is time the human race grew out of its adolescence & the prejudice evidenced even by the celebration of a black president or one that has a vagina instead of a penis- it is the brain & not the body that makes the person an appropriate or innapropriate leader.
1- I would define today’s common usage of the word terrorism as war on non-combatants but its etymology comes originally from government intimidation of the populace during the reign of terror (Le terreur) after the French revolution that abolished (& guillotined) the monarchy in 1789- "If the basis of a popular government in peacetime is virtue, its basis in a time of revolution is virtue and terror -- virtue, without which terror would be barbaric; and terror, without which virtue would be impotent." [Robespierre, speech in Fr. National Convention, 1794] Return
2- “I disagree with everything you say Sir, but will defend to the death your right to say it” Return
3- …a quality of colour with reference to the degree of absorption or reflection of light; a tint or shade; value. That distinctive quality by which colours differ from one another in addition to their differences indicated by chroma (a colour’s relative saturation), tint, shade. Return
4- Spanish Gipsies are Romani, i.e. Indians who left the Punjab around the 11th century & arrived in Europe around the 15th. Return
5- Even Spanish people forget that Flamenco means Flemish, they took what was originally northern European music & applied it to their invention: the six stringed guitar (Prior to this innovation Spain, like the rest of Europe & northern Africa, used four stringed lutes) & evolved over centuries Spain’s emblematic music. Return
Rock & Roll (670 words)
One of my oldest & dearest friends has been very excited by ACDC’s new album & now- world tour.
When I was an adolescent living in a steel town upstate New York, my friends & I thought ourselves too sophisticated for the Disco music of our day & firmly felt the future of popular music was in Progressive Rock (like that unique band: Gentle Giant or Rush & Yes). I still think some of that music was solid- the musicians serious & talented but I would rather hear Al Green, Gladys Knight or Marvin Gaye today.
Despite our ‘sophistication’ we went to Kiss concerts & loved to play Zeppelin, Aerosmith & Peter Frampton at volumes that made our faces bleed from speakers bigger than the furniture in our bedrooms. And most of those bands did make at least some good music even if they had to steal it from the poor black musicians who wrote it but didn’t have lawyers.
I have a wonderful audio interview with Willie Dixon who, when asked how he felt about Pat Boone & Elvis' shameless thieving from the Delta blues, answered: “No one listened to us outside of the honky-tonks but Elvis took the Blues to the world & that is a good thing”
Listening to those Hard Rock & Acid Rock bands wasn’t really about the music, it was about personal expression, identity definition & camaraderie with our peers, it was a scream in a crowded room: "I'm here- I'm me, & that matters". Having studied the violin through my childhood I also loved classical music but played Bach, Caruso & even Brahms at volumes as deafening as Kiss’ nonsense, it is what kids have to do…
When Punk hit I was of age for bars & clubs (well, nearly, but things weren't as strict in those days) & soon moved to its epicentre, London, drank like a Cossack, took speed, acid & whatever else there was & bounced gracelessly around the dance floor with the rest of them.
Some argument can be made for the musical value of the Hard Rock bands, especially sensitive & evocative lyrics like those Ian Anderson (& his uncredited wife) used to write before he blew his brains on God-knows-what unusual combinations of dangerous drugs but Punk was the distillation of the part of Rock that wasn’t music, it wasn’t based on any idealism or musical principle, it was more a metaphor for the great line in that early Brando ‘B’ movie where when asked: “What are you rebelling against?” Brando answers: “Whaddya got?”
Even Punk's anti-social nihilism & originality turned, within a few short years, to standard uniforms made of toilet seat covers, safety pins & red Mohicans. Although their credo was not buying-in to popular culture, Carnaby street quickly turned into a Wall-Mart of these items manufactured just like blue jeans especially for that new market & young people made a living by hanging out there dressed as outrageously as possible so they could ask for money when American tourists wanted to photograph them.
Now, at 46, I don’t look down on punk, Hard Rock or the bad, loud music musically indiscriminating young people listen to today (& there is as much good & bad popular music today as in any age) it is just what young people need to do & should do.
But my old friend, a few years older than me, a man of exceptional intelligence, a research scientist & owner of a company that employs nearly 100 specialized workers, surprises me with his excitement at the bangers from Oz, men in their fifties making a living dressed in the short trousers of their school uniforms (the ones the brothers Young wore when they quit school & started a band).
Give me a dark corner in a smoky club, a deep glass of Single Malt & the mellifluous notes of Bird’s Alto ego & I will thank my lucky stars I’ve reached an age where I no longer have to suffer face bleeds with my music!
Words II- more words (740 words)
I have touched on the subject of religion repeatedly in these pages & mentioned the fact its fascination for me has made of me a keen student of theology for as long as I remember.
Despite study, both practical & theoretical, I have changed few of the fundamental truths that populate my early conclusions- the more new things I learn, new insights I encounter, the more I study those who disagree with me, the less doubt I have over my convictions.
Combine this curiosity with a nature that fell in love with reading the moment its puzzling & mysterious rules were explained to me & you have someone who at an early age required clear definitions of theology’s jargon, what exactly is Gnosticism? Theism? Religion? Spirituality? A miracle? Death? Soul? Reincarnation? Nirvana? Samsara? Eternity? God? God’s love? God’s power? God’s purpose?
Or even, for instance, the varying definitions of good & evil, each precise though some theologies are more honest than others in admitting paradox & ambiguity in their descriptions.
But there is one word that turns out to be particularly interesting for a few reasons: Agnostic.
Firstly, the word took on an allure for me when, having discovered its true meaning, I began to notice other people did not know it. Over the years it has become a quasi-scientific investigation for me where I repeatedly ask: “Do you know the definition of agnostic?” To people of all classes, ages, religious bent or culture, & have yet to encounter someone who either answers: “No.” Or upon claiming the affirmative can then go on & define it correctly when challenged… not one person in a life-time…
It has also worked for me more than once to liven one of those dismal dinners where the party refuse general dialogue & split into boring conversational duos.
Secondly, it is a particularly interesting word because,
- Unlike many, it is too young to have suffered any evolution in meaning through common usage.
- We know the date of its coinage (1869) & the man who coined it
- We have in his own hand an un-debatably concise definition.
The man was the brilliant 19th century British scientist & defender of Darwin in the famous Monkey Trials, not to mention the patriarch of three generations of outstanding thinkers: Sir Thomas Huxley.
He based the word on the ancient Greek gnōsis, knowledge or ‘to know’, just as atheist applies to theist. But though the grammar is similar their meanings do not fall into the same category, i.e. theology. Huxley’s agnosticism was based on the fact all we can possibly hope to know can only come to our awareness filtered inevitably by the only means we have: our five senses; reducing any belief arrived at without confirmation by our (subjective) senses mere & unreliable speculation.
Though Huxley himself as well as other important thinkers like David Hume & Bertrand Russell used the word agnostic within theological consideration its actual definition falls outside of these limits to the simply indemonstrable (& there is no reason one cannot be an agnostic theist); otherwise we would not need the discreet word: atheist. If an agnostic were just someone unconvinced for lack of evidence he becomes indistinguishable from the atheist who would also change his mind given new & incontrovertible evidence.
What Sir Thomas himself commented on one occasion:
When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last.
The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.
So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took.
And more definition from dictionary.com -abridged by me so as not to repeat:
An agnostic does not deny the existence of God and heaven but holds that one cannot know for certain whether or not they exist. …Thomas H. Huxley, who believed that only material phenomena were objects of exact knowledge. …Gnosis which was used by early Christian writers to mean "higher, esoteric knowledge of spiritual things"
It has been about two months since my last addition to the 'Mental Workshop' & I've missed it.
I've been busy with a series of paintings & an ambitious animation project begun with two others about 4 months ago but hope to get back to a little regular writing time again now.
Below, something that has been rattling around in my head since last I had time to write...
Words (900 words)
I think that the people able to express their thoughts succinctly, concisely & lucidly are not those who have large vocabularies & therefore an exact word to describe each thought, but rather those who use common words in a precise way.
To be perfectly clear: the thoughts I want to explore in this article have nothing to do with how succinctly, concisely or lucidly the subject thinks, but strictly his ability to express abstract thought, by tacit agreement with his listener, through symbolic sounds made by his vocal chords or with funny squiggles on a piece of paper.
Many people use common words as approximations of their meanings, counting instead on context & shared background knowledge.
If you consider Mehrabian and Ferris' * work which claimed that if you remove corporal language, facial gesture, emphasis, intonation, et. al. from spoken communication only 7% relies on definition of the words used; it becomes easy to see why some people can communicate reasonably well in person while failing miserably in writing.
Aside from the ever evolving dictionary (some languages develop new meanings & assimilate, or coin, new words more rapidly than others) in order to assign a definition to certain words one must also understand their etymology, the history of the word, to be sure of its exact meaning.
Some words take on a legitimately new meaning because of common usage (there is some polemic, for instance, in the origins of the word snob but whether it was originally from the Latin: sine nobilitate (without nobility) or the 18th century Scots’ snab, for shoemaker’s assistant, or even from its use by the 18th century Cambridge student to whom it described anyone who was not; it originally held a meaning very dissimilar to today’s **) while other words have reasoned linguistic logic which they must perforce adhere to.
An example? While the subtlety inherent in the difference in meaning between the words: sadness & melancholy might change with usage & culture, the differences between the words: happy & unhappy are not open to the same range of interpretation because of their linguistic logic.
I have only an amateur interest in linguistics & do not presume to use this essay to teach anyone anything, but rather just to bring up the question of two words in particular that I realize more & more over the years are frequently used in different ways by speakers & listeners, words whose common & approximate usage has blurred their real meaning: Arrogance & Shyness (or timidity).
The word arrogance (to arrogate a quality, or arrogare in Latin as in today’s Italian) in other words: to claim qualities without right: “I am honest, I never lie.” It is more commonly used, however, when describing someone with a righteous belief he cannot justify with logical argument: “I am superior to black people because I am Asian.”
If we define logic as that which can be disproved by debate, then anyone with a logical reason for his opinion (though the logic can be correct while the conclusion wrong because, among other reasons, of a lack of criteria) can never be arrogant however deep his belief in the correctness of those conclusions.
A good example might be the famously ‘arrogant’ Richard Dawkins who doesn’t actually have a single arrogant opinion (at least not in print!). Each of his conclusions is deeply reasoned & his confidence in them, therefore, justified whether they turn out right or wrong.
What people misconstrue as arrogance in Dawkins is actually condescension in his manner- a brilliant academic with a stereotypical scientist's lack of social skills; what might be described simply as a paucity of personal charisma.
Indeed, he may even be an intellectual snob without qualifying as arrogant.
While a hard-earned confidence misjudged as arrogance might be named unfairly a negative quality, shyness shares the same phenomenon but with opposite results: it enjoys an unjustified reputation akin to charm.
Shyness is not a synonym for humility.
Shyness is actually no more than ego out of its depth.
The first argument I will offer is the fact the shy person is inevitably resentful. The resentfulness comes of a sense of deserving better regard from others than his social inefficiency (the shyness) grants him.
A shy person is never humble while a humble person has no reason to be shy since he doesn’t expect other people’s high regard.
Shyness is merely an insecure ego that fears a gaffe, an uncharacteristic (to his own imagined ideal self) faux pas that might belay his true worth.
We humans are full of complex & paradoxical instincts confused by an evolution that gave us minds to examine our pathetic physical form & destiny that cause us strange, indeed, sometimes mistaken reactions to one-another; like finding it easier, more natural, to give to someone who has, than to someone who hasn’t.
But none seem as strange to me as the reversal of value judgement the misunderstanding of these two words results in. What is mistakenly understood as arrogance is actually an attractive quality & the way shyness is misconstrued obscures an unattractive personality trait.
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* 'Inference of Attitude from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels' in The Journal of Counselling Psychology Vol.31, 1967,pp.248-52) Return...
** American Heritage dictionary- "One who tends to patronize, rebuff, or ignore people regarded as social inferiors and imitate, admire, or seek association with people regarded as social superiors." Return...
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Confidence (220 words)
Among the pleasures of age over youth I am slowly discovering, some come of simply knowing one's self so much better. It has been dawning on me that the unquestioning & unlimited confidence I had in myself in my youth was mere arrogance not because it was or wasn't justifiable, but because it was founded on my belief in my strengths- whereas the confidence I feel in myself now, at 46, is based on an acceptance of my weaknesses.
When I was younger & did something badly, stupidly or regrettably for whatever reason, I always felt like: Ooops! What was that? That was not something my concept of the ideal I would do, it was an aberration, a mistake, there must be an excuse; a reason I will not repeat.
As I get older I notice as consequence of experience, however, that I always do 'that' wrong, it is not in my nature to do 'that' well.
I can avoid the circumstances where my shortcomings tend to manifest & I can try harder when forced to work within that range, but accepting them as weaknesses, my very own & intimately understood failings, is liberating & lets me feel a confidence of greater depth than the one I felt for the inexperienced & abstract but perfect Paul of my youth's fantasies.
How to steal from gullible artists (540 words)
I get letters like the one below almost every day, their approach varies within a small range but their purpose is always the same (they merit no more than deletion but this one happened to catch me in writing mode & before I knew what I’d done I had written the thoughts it engeandered & sent it! -My answer below):
Paul,
I am an exhibition assistant for Ico Gallery in Tribeca, New York. I recently found your work online, through www.myartspace.com. The director of the gallery has asked me to assist him in putting together some of our shows for late 2008 and 2009. I especially enjoyed "Patches" and your "Self Portrait." I feel your work would fit in perfectly with several of our upcoming exhibitions.
We look to develop long term relationships with artists who are committed to succeeding in the increasingly difficult art world. We act as both agent and dealer for all artists we represent. Our goal is to increase name recognition for both Ico Gallery and its artists. Our ground floor flagship gallery is 2,500 square feet and located in one of New York City’s most affluent neighborhoods, Tribeca.
Due to the extreme costs and risks of operating in one of New York’s most expensive neighborhoods we do charge a representation fee. Our compensation for the first year of representation should be expected to be around 2500 USD. The fee can be considerably lower for established New York artists. Please review our website www.icogallery.com for additional information about our special events and our popular Ico Music concert series which is hosted on a weekly basis at the gallery. If you have additional questions please let me know and I will pass along your information to our Director.
Best,
Ava Alberti
Exhibition Assistant
Icosahedron Gallery
Icogallery.com
212.966.3897
Dear Ms Alberti,
I am 46 years old & have never done anything but paint & sculpt- if you want a serious, devoted, career artist, who does well for himself without selling in TriBeCa: here I am.
But I think you will understand that as an experienced second-generation painter I have a deep mistrust, not to say righteous prejudice, against anyone but art-materials sellers, who make money from artists instead of paintings-buyers.
I will not pay $2500 a year or even 5 cents a year for your 'representation' but if you think you have clients to buy my paintings than we can begin a mutually satisfying & lucrative relationship.
The way it works is thus: I dedicate my working life to creating a valuable product you, in turn, dedicate your working life to selling; then we share the money.
Please don't contact me again if you as a gallery want money I made by selling paintings to clients I found without you- I believe that is technically & traditionally your province & responsibility in this sort of relationship (the very reason you can afford the expenses you mention in your letter- because you have buyers we painters can't find).
I take my share of the money made from sales to paintings-collectors & invest it in the expenses associated with being able to continue dedicating my time to the manufacture of the product it is your profession to sell; you take your share of the money & pay the expenses for the address that attracts buyers my studio address does not.
You feed off of the weak & exploit naïve hopes & I’m sure the innocent painter who invests his day job’s money with you will never see it again; I think you could find a sales job with more dignity Ava, shame on you.
Sincerely,
Paul
Priests behaving badly (690 words)
I have been a hopeless atheist as long as I have been a keen student of theology- most of my life. My study & personal experience of a great number of religions, their philosophies & histories has, for many years, been pushing the Catholic Church closer & closer to the bottom of my list of consciously dishonest, corrupt & harmful of all.
When the present Pope, Benedict the XVIth, recently apologized in name of The Church (before 800 solemn Bishops) for 1500 years of sexual relations with the Faithful’s children, it gave me pause for thought.
The generalised response to this decision was applause for the Church’s new sincerity & openness to change, but I wonder just what accepting that forgiveness, however genuine the apology, actually means. The fact these men in robes, the supposed guardians of their flock’s spiritual health forced their penises, hard with excitement, into the colons of pre-pubescent boys afraid of their authority, calls for something more.
It was never a secret, everyone has always known the abuse of power in the form of brutal rape of defenceless & pre-sexual humans by priests was happening. Catholic orphanages routinely turned out boys trained to homosexuality whether they were by nature or not. But now as the Church loses its long held authority (both moral & legal) people protest & the Church apologises…
I think the apology, even more than its absence, points to a pressing need for fundamental re-evaluation by the Church rather than our forgiveness.
I can also think of gestures by the Church that might convince me better of their sincerity than politically-decided & unfelt words. How's this for an idea? - The Vatican sells off one small room of the thousands that hold our cultural heritage from Aristotle's manuscripts to secret gospels; paintings & sculpture by all the great artists in history, or even one of the rooms piled like a Pharaoh's tomb with finely wrought gold & rare gems offered as bribes to cooperation by heads of state throughout modern history.
All the important museums in the world would fight over these objects & more people would be able to appreciate their ancestor's legacy than the few given permission to visit the locked dungeons of the richest State on earth.
With this money they might, say: buy ten acres for every starving farmer in Chiapas with plenty left over for fertilizer. (Or tractors & seeds or whatever it is the poor sods need down there.)
Instead, I remember the quick tour of Mexico the last Pope, John Paul, did to animate the dwindling few, old-world Catholics who still think the Pope is practically God's incarnation on earth. The Church decided that despite the centuries of financial support the poor Mexican had provided, it couldn't afford to pay for the trip out of the Vatican's coffers.
A deal was made with a potato chip company who, for a couple of million bucks, were sold the exclusive right to the Pope's image. They used this right to print flimsy coin-sized medals of his face they then offered in each bag of chips; & the starving farmers in Chiapas spent their pennies on packaged potatos in order to get their hands on the bit of plastic.
If not the principle than just as a question of Papal dignity, this is worse than the holy relics the Church used to fabricate in their monasteries for profitable sale. Which allowed, among other things, the purchase & building of some of the most extravagant architecture in Europe at the same time it was being decimated by Black Plague.
And I'm convinced these clever administrators negotiated the deal in a way that resulted in profits to both companies, the Church & the potato chip's, while the poor Catholic Faithful get poorer & have more children.
The Church has always required payment of one sort or another to provide forgiveness to confessing sinners, now that it is they who confess & ask for forgiveness, where is their donation?
May the shame you apologize for actually befall you Benedict- thus I curse you.
How to make a painting (2260 words)
When I was a child my younger sister, my mother & I, followed the deeply serious, obsessed, indeed: possessed painter who was my father (fifteen years my mother’s senior), from one country to another without more reason or motivation than his hunger for life.
I guess this gave us kids a backdrop to life that was a little different to those we came to know in the various places we lived. When I was six & it came time to leave our idyllic & ancient stone farmhouse in the mountains of Tuscany in order to move to Florence where I could begin school, it was effectively my & my sister’s first exposure to a world not of my mother’s making & description.
Our first toys not made by my mother were pre-historic human bones my father found deep in a cave in Sicily where the locals wouldn’t enter for fear of the Cyclops who lived there, & I remember their oh-so-dry whiteness well. (There was an ancient Greek society living isolated there in Sicily till long after Greece's conquest by the Romans, hence the Cyclops).
At the age of six I had never seen a television or been to the cinema & I remember clearly the first image- in black & white, a turning world on a black background. Probably no more sophisticated than a shot of a spinning globe on a desktop that never-the-less had a deep impact on me & led me to the only conclusion my uninformed mind could- it was a mini-theatre with little people inside it. Not to mention the images that haunted me for months from the 1930’s King Kong that was my first film on a big screen at about seven.
And when my mother tried to explain what the word ‘thief’ meant she had some trouble conveying the concept to me. Finally she described someone planting a seed, caring for the plant that grew from it for the purpose of eventually eating its fruit but before he gets a chance someone else comes along, picks the fruit & eats it. "That is a thief" she concluded & I, at six years old, cried bitter tears at the discovery such evil existed in the world.
When my Dad left us I was still a child, my mother moved less frequently but there were still a few countries & various moves within countries in the short few years before I hit sixteen & in my boundless magnanimity decided it would be unbecomingly cruel to continue to let the world that waited for the privilege of my presence, suffer my absence any longer. I boarded my first aeroplane alone at that age ready to disembark to the applauding crowds gathered on the tarmac to welcome me.
As things have turned out it has been a tad more difficult to impress the world than my initial expectations projected…
Having changed the cultures with which I live so many times, added to the fact I have no hometown, no childhood friends, no anchor cast in any particular country, has given me a feeling I am long accustomed to: Everyone else shares a common knowledge I am ignorant of.
Among the other effects this history has had for me has been the saving of very few mementos (because of the need to constantly distill possessions to what will fit in a few suitcases & a sea chest) & yet, my mother has managed to hold on all these years to one of my early paintings, naïf but expressive, a self-portrait lit by a candle on one side throwing half my face into dramatic shadow. It is oils on board & dated 1966, when I was four.
So it came to me that if I find myself living in a rich country or a poor one, town or countryside, among Buddhists or Muslims, though I can make sincere, intimate friendships & even fall in love, I also know that the history of a culture grown thousands of years in the soil of Hinduism, for instance, will always provide a fundamental divide that goes beyond our difference in ancestral knowledge & beliefs to a difference in our concept of our home- the universe, that not only will never meet but cannot even be described in words.
Or to give an example more familiar to most readers & yet no less extreme: Despite my years in the 'States there is an entire backdrop of television shows shared as children, early indoctrination of patriotism (different to most other countries) history & historic attitude*; sports & an indigenous sense of humour which I do not share.
The string of similarity in the course of my personal history is made of the smell of turpentine & linseed oil, of memories of us four all sleeping in the same bed, my Dad & Mum with heads at one end & my sister & I the other, while the big room in the house was dedicated to my Dad’s studio. Never running out of art materials though it wasn't unusual for my Dad to paint a painting on either side of a canvas for lack of more, neither was it unusual that we ran out of food without money to buy more. And growing up with heroes that weren’t politicians, sports figures, Hollywood actors or popular singers but painters dead these 500 years…
To the feeling of my own ignorance of cultural imperatives wherever I find myself, my having lived always in studios, my Dad’s, my Mother’s & my own, has added a mistaken assumption that others understand the things that were common knowledge where I came from, like how a painting is made.
I don’t mean ‘painter stuff’ like an understanding of materials which, nowadays, with everything manufactured commercially even most painters don’t bother learning, I mean, instead- the abstract concept behind ‘making a painting’.
From time to time I have taken students, usually with art degrees or often, architecture. Time & again I find myself stressing the same lesson & yet it was only recently that the idea gelled & I realised the theory behind this lesson is of the most crucial importance & that most people aren’t aware of it! It was as a revelation to me!
Because a canvas is a two-dimensional surface people assume the process of covering it with a painting is a two-dimensional process. But rather than a question of width & height it is one of a depth built in layers. Just as Paint by number kits start kids off with the wrong approach all amateur paintings reveal this same misunderstanding. Making a painting is a three-dimensional process more akin to focusing a camera than shooting a photograph with it.
Moving to the surface too soon instead of building up to it is the most common mistake & once one begins a level of detailed observation that belongs to later layers he commits himself to those hard & clearly defined brushstrokes instead of being free to improve them.
The painting is built up a little at a time & though each layer makes the painting move toward one’s personal vision of perfection, the brushstrokes the better ones cover, were not mistakes that were fixed but rather a necessary part of the process; just as an eraser can remove mistakes or be used as another drawing implement alongside your pencil.
Many so-called painters today unashamedly use projectors instead of drawing & if they are good at judging colour they can conceivably fill in the drawing they have projected in a single layer of paint. I have even been in murals painting factories where thirty people are busy filling in colours, chosen & premixed by a computer, on large canvases that go out to fashionable clothes store chains & suchlike. Without the layers it is craft, not art.**
An example of hyperrealist painting by Robert Bechtle
I often start a painting without a drawing; I squint my eyes to separate the subtle tonal differences & bright colour contrasts into the three basics, light, dark & middle-tone (in a quasi-monochrome of maybe Raw Umber with Naples yellow) with reduced colour saturation (by squinting one reduces the amount of light that enters the eye forcing it to count more on the rods & less on the cones of the retina (i.e. tone instead of colour) making it easier to judge the relative tones instead of confusing a saturated colour next to a pale one as a difference in tone instead of hue).
I then paint these three tones with a large brush & a confidence that might make someone watching think I was sure of being exactly right with each one, though in truth, I do feel it is perfect when I apply it, experience has taught me most if not all of these initial brushstrokes will take correction in the next layer (& having something to correct makes a very good start).
As the layers build up & the brushstrokes become smaller, each layer will give some brushstrokes that were indeed perfect (subjectively, of course). It will be these brushstrokes, recognised & left alone that will give the finished canvas its life & verve- the larger the brushstroke the better***.
If I want to continue working on a canvas ‘focused-in’ to the degree I just described, I can reach very small observation before moving from stiff hog-hairs to soft sables. At this stage the careful observation of slight change in tone hue & colour begins making the brushstrokes disappear as each is so close to the one next to it (i.e. because the gradations are so gradual). If I then want to move on to a series of translucent glazes I can make the evidence of its having been painted disappear altogether.
In my opinion a painting taken to this point has far too much information for the viewer to able to enjoy it emotively instead of only intellectually, it is the difference between poetry & journalism. He may say: “Wow! Look at the skill evidenced by the careful observation in this painting.” Or worse: "It's good; why- it looks just like a photograph" without realising that a life dedicated to imitating a simple machine (the camera) is an insult to one who dedicates his life, instead, to the pursuit of art.
Van Gogh, by contrast, gives the viewer a house & lets him furnish it with his imagination. If one looks at his crows-- painted like a child’s, with one crooked brushstroke each-- flying over the wheat fields bending with the wind under a dark & menacing autumn sky, one can even reach a point of feeling the depression that led Vincent to shoot himself after applying the last dab of paint to it.
It is those brushstrokes applied with confidence in their perfection that make a painting great. The same size brushstroke, of the same colour, tone & hue placed on the same bit of canvas but painted cautiously with a small soft brush, will not work.
So all one has to do is learn to recognize the lucky brushstroke & try to avoid covering it with more paint!
* For instance the American cultural stress on individualism where children are routinely taught they can be whoever they want & do whatever they propose, compared to Oriental children who are reprimanded for being different to others. The difference is that between Confucian dialectics & Jefferesonian political theory.
Each attitude has strong arguments & benefits to support it & yet, generally speaking, neither culture questions the correctness of their own way- early indoctrination few re-evaluate. Andthe occidental who becomes a monk in a Thai temple has not gone over to the other side but rather- exercised the very same cultural imperative that made him believe he could become what he proposed.
Even what might be called a superficial difference can have profound effects on human interaction & understanding. The facial & physical gesticulations that accompany southern European speech make them look like overstated comic book characters to the Oriental eye whereas what they consider a dignified & considered reserve expressed as a contemplative & silent motionlessness, is merely frustrating inscrutability to the European.
More examples? If you tell someone from the 'States: "You are ambitious" He will take it as a compliment. If you say the same to a Spaniard, it is an insult. Whereas if you tell a Spaniard he's proud, he will hear it with pleasure & thank you- say the same to a Japanese & you speak fighting words!
** To give a concrete example of something specific where nothing but layers will do: If you like to paint, say: trees (as I do). You may want two or three tones that represent light & shadow even on thin branches. If you paint the light beside the darker tones it will always tend to look like an outline & will have that difficult-to-define but recognizable amateur quality. If instead, you paint the whole branch the colour of the darkest tone, let it dry & then add the lighter tones allowing the dark to show where you want shadow- it will be more convincing. Return...
*** I recently saw an Exhibit at Sevilla's museum of fine art, of the miraculous paintings Sorolla did for the Hispanic Society in Brooklyn between 1914 & 1919; some were almost 8 metres wide by 4 tall. When approaching one of these huge canvases to study his brushstroke I found some that could only have been painted with a house-painting-brush & at a metre long looked like they described nothing at all- until one backed away a few metres to see it defined with dismaying precision, the light shining on a horse's flank, or maybe the silhouette of a figure: now that's painting!
Scots & their oats (490 words)
A traditional Scots porridge is made of the left-over oats from bread-making. They are placed in a clay pot & left with water & salt at the back of the wood-burning oven once the bread’s finished baking. The oven takes all night to cool & as it does the oats bubble & congeal into a nutritious & stomach filling gelatinous mass eaten still bubbling hot in the cold northern dawn.
My Dad was an archetypical, kilt-wearing, bagpipe-playing Scot who grew up in Glasgow. And yet I, who have never done more than visit Scotland, have a better right to wear a kilt than he had, being as I am, Son of a Scot while my Dad’s own father (& mother) was a full-blooded Ashkenazy Jew from Russia.
A professor of English history once explained to me the importance oats had in the long running struggle between the powerful, well-manned, armed & trained English military, with the wild disorganised clans who fought with little more than hand-forged axes & passion.
He explained that feeding the British army was a large consideration in time, transport, expense, supply sources & storage as well as, organisation & even the actual cooking & feeding logistics. This put the English at a big disadvantage to the Scots tribes who simply filled their pockets with oats, moved whenever they wanted & ate wherever they had water.
So when my Dad saw me making oatmeal the American way with milk & sugar he never failed to remind me that the correct & manly way to eat oatmeal was with salt & water.
When my Father died I went to London for the funeral & a few of us staid with my father’s third wife who is from Laos & couldn’t therefore, be in the house alone so soon after his death for fear of his ghost.
An old friend, Peter the Piper, slept in one room & I another. One morning I was the first up & rummaged through the kitchen having to settle on tea instead of coffee & a bag of oats I found in a cupboard.
When Peter walked in to find me stirring my oats in sweetened milk I decided to take the initiative & cut him short before he had a chance to mock my eating oats like a child: “No need Peter, Dad’s been telling me all my life I make oats the wrong way!” “What do you mean?” Asked Peter. “Well you know, in Scotland they’re made with water & salt…” “Water?” Said Peter, confused & righteous at the same time. “I mean Americans make oatmeal with milk & sugar…” “MILK?!” Now genuinely alarmed- “But if you add water or milk to oats they might get all soggy.” “Hu?” I retorted intelligently. “How do you eat them then?” I asked, “Well, as they come, you know: out of the bag.” (Bloody Scots!)
Friday July 18th, 2008
Life's greatest suffering is always due to the stupidity of others because, by great
good luck, we are always able to excuse our own.
A note about signatures on paintings (530 words)
In a canvas not unusually long or tall in proportion to its other sides, the signature should be of commensurate size- too small & it looks silly, too large: It takes over the focus of the composition. But in its right size it does inevitably form part of a composition, sometimes unbalancing, sometimes complementing & sometimes even anchoring an item of the composition that wanted to slide off the edge or bottom.
Which size is correct? Well, I’d say: It should be clearly legible from a painting's appropriate viewing distance (generally speaking- three times the diagonal) but should fade at greater distance.
A painter once asked me: “My signature colour is Cadmium red, what’s yours?” But one can’t afford to commit to a signature colour if the signature is part of a composition. As such, one must choose the colour & placement just as he did for every other element of the composition, i.e. uniquely to the canvas.
My mother is a restoration artist or, conservator, as they’re known these days- she 
performs complex processes on antique paintings in order to clean them, replace missing paint, make a hole disappear or even separate the paint from the degraded canvas to give it a new one to lie on.
Judging by the frequency she runs into the problem it seems many painters don’t realize that varnish, Dammar varnish, is designed to be porous so the oils underneath can breathe, stretch & contract with heat & humidity changes; but this also means it is porous enough to allow dirt to infiltrate it.
On average, depending on the circumstances in which the painting is hung & how well the protective varnish was originally applied, every 50-100 years it must be removed & replaced before the dirt reaches the paint layer (it is always a little magical to see a landscape, under my mother’s careful ministrations, go from its green skies made of the original blue overlaid by a translucent layer of varnish yellowed by dirt- back to the blue it was when it left the artist’s easel).
What she often finds is that the artist has signed after applying the varnish & runs the danger of having his signature wiped off by an inattentive conservator when it is cleaned in the future.
The four corners are the commonly chosen but the middle bottom is also appropriate & when a canvas is being particularly exigent & difficult, I have sometimes found the solution in one of the upper corners but in vertical instead of horizontal. Always being careful, of course, not to sign so close to any edge that the frame will cover it, or worse: part of it.
For the ones that just plain refuse to have their compositions altered by a signature I have two solutions: The back of the canvas or on the front but in the same colour as the background I paint it on. This results in its being difficult to see but I figure if the painting has value for future generations then the experts will find it, & if it doesn’t- what difference does it make?
Bob Dylan (710 words)
I remember being about 8 years old when Dylan was 28, it was 1970. I sat in a room 
in my Mum’s house in Florence in the company of a bunch of nice, young, rich, American hippies. In Italy ostensibly to study art but really dodging the draft like their poor brothers were doing in Canada. Dylan sang a weak strain in a transistor voice from his latest album- Self Portrait- vinyl, under the needle of a plastic low-fi record player. The kids (big men to my eight years) talked of him in reverent tones & I found the courage to speak up & ask who he was. One of the young men turned to me & said simply (but with a gravitas & passion that has stuck these 38 years) “He’s a genius”
At the concert he gave in Jerez de la Frontera’s bullfighting ring the other night, he was dressed like a nasty joke by Gaultier at his cattiest, never once looked at us, his audience, & rather than singing his brilliant lyrics he decided to just repeat two sounds the entire evening that sounded something like: bluu & ooou as if attacked & moaning with a frightful case of acid indigestion. Combined with the fact he changed the melodies of all our old favourites, we none of us, had any idea which song was being interpreted at any given moment.
The strange costume he has settled into in this last decade or more,
is a wide, flat-brimmed, white Stetson which suits his Jewish face as well as a yarmulke might John Wayne's or a Muslim turban- George Bush's. A beautifully cut but badly designed black suit with Marlene Dietrich fake shoulders & brass buttons that rose to just under his chin turning his toothpick body into a, well: toothpick dressed as Marlene Dietrich. But the touch that must have had Gaultier rolling with laughter at his own dark & disturbing humour as soon as Dylan left his dressing rooms, was the single brass button that sat over each of his nipples.
The audience was made up largely of middle-aged men dressed in neat grey haircuts, pink Polos, Chinos, sailing shoes & little cashmere sweaters wrapped around their waists (just in case it got cold here in the southernmost part of Europe... in July...) hard to believe they were the same ones that remembered to take drugs to Woodstock but forgot the food!
People did pass joints but then, here in the south of Spain, they do that wherever you go, but instead of a huge audience showing their love with waving, lit, cigarette lighters, we were a small one & the lights were provided in the wrong direction by a thousand mobile ‘phones taking bad digital photographs. I’m sure that of the million images generated that night not one was worth looking at but then no-one wanted photographs of Dylan, his band or the simple black stage but rather, just as we used to buy t-shirts commemorating the concert, they only wanted proof they had been there in a historic moment… (in this case, not a musical event but the death of a generation who thought they formed the beginning of a new world order based on love & peace)
His five-man backup band was excellent & never missed a note the entire evening (even when Dylan missed his entry) & so I was curious who they were. Finally in the last words of the concert & the first directed at us, the audience, he began introducing them while waving his arm in no particular direction: "Bluu ooou ooou, bluuooou…"
Could this be the same man who led a generation & shocked the establishment with fiery arrogance, un-doubtable truths & brilliant poetry composed of common but precise colloquialism?
Didn't matter to me, if I want to hear him sing his best songs in a moment he actually felt them- I have all the recordings right here, I only went to see an old friend... (though it's been a very long time indeed since I prefer Jazz)
But, I wonder, why doesn't he quit? He certainly showed no sign of enjoying it & I rather doubt he needed the money from the few tickets he sold us.
A study reported in Nature in 1998 found that only 7 percent of the members of the elite National Academy of Sciences believed in God. For biologists the figure was just 5.5 percent.
Theoretical physics & me (1460 words)
I remember discovering biology at 12. When I asked questions that had nothing to do with our exams or stayed after class to timidly ask for deeper explanations, I remember one sixth grade teacher asking me, why the fascination? I answered confidently & without hesitation: “Because I didn’t know such explanations for how the world works existed.” But when she went on to ask me why this fact interested me I found my twelve year old mind wasn’t able to formulate an answer because it couldn’t make sense of the question: Hadn’t I just answered that question? Wasn’t the fact the answers exist enough to explain wanting to know them?
In a moment of tender anguish described by Brian Greene in the foreword to Elegant Universe, he explains how as a boy it came to him that there had been a moment of history when it was theoretically possible for one man to amass the sum knowledge of humanity but that, that moment was long gone. Greene, unlike me, was at twelve being tutored in maths by a Columbia University professor since he had already 
outstripped any of the teachers available to a high school student, much less an Elementary one. He goes on to explain it was this boyhood angst at not being able, even in potential, to learn all there was, that eventually drove him to a career in physics dedicated to a Unified theory which, in essence, is everything there is to know.
Although I never lost my interest in biology by the time I reached the eighth grade I realised that its study inevitably led to that of chemistry. I followed theoretical chemistry through to my junior year at university when the application necessary to keep up on its study had too little application for the art degree I was actually trying to complete for me to continue sacrificing the time. I had always hated the lab, couldn’t care less how chemicals reacted to each other, I only wanted to know- why. I didn't want to make anything, I just wanted to know. I had, however, learned enough to realize long before university that the study of chemistry must lead to a study of physics & yet, I was in my early/mid thirties before I suddenly took up an interest in its study on my own.
It began with a book a girlfriend gave me, saying: “I want to know something about this subject but I can’t understand the book, so can I process it through your brain instead? Will you read it & then tell me about it?” It was David Deutsch’s (the director of theoretical physics research at Oxford) Fabric of Reality & it was as a hand-grenade inside my skull. And yet, I noticed that without the basics, which I was not in possession of, most of the information was escaping me.
And so, I picked up easy, popular books, like Bill Bryson’s, Steven Gould's & Brian Greene’s, & then began looking for the books by the men referred to in these others & so discovered why time, as we perceive it: lineally, does not exist. Hawking & Dawkins*, Planck, Popper & Rank, Heisenberg’s important uncertainty- & Bohr; Bell’s theorem, Schrodinger's Cat, Super-symmetric string theory, parallel universes (multiverse, instead of universe) & “spooky action at a distance” as Einstein mistakenly maligned it.
I find the avant-garde theories wonderful for one who enjoys, as I do, unexpected & unpredictable neurochemical activity in one’s own brain. Indeed, I have seen some of the leading theoretical physicists themselves interviewed: their eyes like plates as they explain how the universe is made, why they believe these theories to be true & which experiments support them; while admitting with wonder that their puny minds are incapable of actually imagining these same truths.
In the end though, the part of my superficial, autodidact, store of information which turned out to be the most fascinating to me was the basics, what the General & Special theories of relativity mean (& why Newton was wrong). Why the curvature of space by the gravity of massive objects shapes our universe, how time is incorporated as fourth dimension to the three dimensions our perceptions are capable of recognising. Why nothing with mass can travel faster than light** or how Heisenberg showed that real space, in the sense of nineteenth century ‘ether’, cannot exist. That however small the parcel of space, of vacuum, examined, one can never be sure it does not, or will not, contain matter before, during, or after examination.
I remember a formal dinner I had attended before my unguided & sloppy study of physics began, where among the interesting guests, I found myself with the luck to be seated beside a research astronomer working at an important observatory in Texas. Never being one for small talk my conversation with him quickly turned to my trying to pump him for an eight year university education over a three hour meal.
I also remember that I at one point interrupted some explanation of his to ask him how it was that he seemed to be referring to the Universe as finite. Even if the existence of all matter ended at a certain distance from us, beyond that there could only be infinite space because: “What could possibly exist in the absence of space?”
It was at that point I lost him to an apologetic shake of the head, so much to say: “We haven’t time enough for me to fill in the ignorance evidenced by that question” & I was forced to turn to other guests for fear of being a bore to the astronomer (though actually, I noticed he ate in silence after that as no one else seemed to think his world of mysterious knowledge interesting).
I realize now that the answer to that question, & the conscious conceptualizing of the hypothetical construct of a single dimension which admits no volume, was the most fascinating & primordial bit of knowledge in the whole field of physics to me. If one stops to think about it the concept is not precious or clever, anyone might consider it, but the truth for most of us is, that unless directed by a particular line of reasoning, thinking of the existence of a single dimension without the others, doesn’t occur to us.
The Singularity. The place where at one time (15 or 20 billion years ago) all the matter in the Universe was; though it existed in a single dimension, i.e. without width, depth, height or time. A single dimension is in essence, the same as no dimension because whichever of the four you pick, without at least one of the others, it becomes indistinguishable from the others. The phrase I began this paragraph with: “The place” was necessary to construct the sentence but in fact, it has no meaning. One naturally imagines the Singularity which suddenly explodes into the Big Bang, as existing in infinite space, what else? But no, before the Big Bang & the physical laws it introduced, there was no space…
In just under a third of the first second after the Big Bang, matter extended into a Universe 150 million light years in diameter. Which would imply matter moved at something like 1500 times the speed of light (if I remember my figures badly I apologize but I am neither mathematician nor am I interested in accumulating such details but rather the abstract concepts behind them).
One thousand five-hundred times the speed of light? But that, as we know, is a physical impossibility- not allowed by the laws of physics that pertain, by chance, to our Universe. And there the rub: As matter moved, it did not move through space, but rather created space because of the effect of curvature its mass & speed had.
Matter broke no physical laws by moving at lightning- times a gazillion- speed, because prior to the end of the first third of a second after the Big Bang, those laws hadn’t yet been made…
And a Universe that is curved must eventually meet itself, hence the finiteness that does away with the need for something else (like space) after the end of a lineal Universe.
Fantastic, no? Physics is becoming the new metaphysics.
* Yes, I know Richard Dawkins is not a physicist (& the truth is I discovered him in 1976 but couldn't resist the alliterative quality of his name!), but he is something of a philosopher & his oh-so-lucidly described concept of reality sheds understanding in areas of physics. Philosophy was, after all, the mother of the sciences until the twentieth century. How did she lose her reign? Probably the same way art lost its place in society: by becoming too bloody difficult to understand! Return...
** As matter accelerates it gains mass. As it approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite which would require infinite energy to further accelerate its motion. Return...
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
and go
to the grave
with the song still in them.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Faust & Mephistopheles (550 words)
If Christophere Marlowe hadn't been killed at the tender age of 29 in 1593, history might have made him his contemporary, Shakespeare's, equal or better. He was killed with his own blade ostensibly in a brawl that followed his questioning 'the reckoninge' (the bill) after having eaten & drunk at an Inn, but actually his death is shrouded in intrigue, complot & politics.
Some historians suspect he was about to betray Sir Walter Raleigh's plot against Queen Elizabeth & was killed for that reason by the tavern owner, Ingram Frizer, who was also a known agent of Raleigh's (& was found not guilty of murder on the grounds of self-defence).
How silly Man has been throughout history in repeatedly thinking politics can outweigh art in importance. How much more important to us, some fifteen generations later, might have been Marlowe's writing than 20 years difference in Raleigh's date of decease.
Marlowe’s play The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus, was based on the mythologized life of the German Renaissance alchemist & astrologer Dr. Johann Georg Faust, who lived from about 1466 to 1540.
It was later taken up as an epic poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who completed part 1 in 1806 & part 2 the year he died in 1832; 26 years later.
When Marlowe’s Dr Faustus trades his eternal soul for infinite knowledge he asks Mephistopheles: “How comes it then that thou art out of Hell?” To which he replies: “Why- this is Hell, nor am I out of it” which he later explains:
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place, but where we are is 
Hell,
And where Hell is must we ever be.
As Wendel Berry points out on the subject of Dr Faust’s unquenchable desire for knowledge, John Milton comments in Paradise Lost- book VII, in regards to Adam’s wanting to be told the story of creation, the Archangel Raphael tells him:
Knowledge is as food, & needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain;
Oppresses else with surfeit, & soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.
Thinking of these great poets & the concepts of good & evil, knowledge & wisdom, power & peace, reminded me of a bit of advice by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle given to me as a boy through his main literary character: Sherlock Holmes, & never forgotten.
In one of the detective stories (I can’t remember which or even the circumstances in which the scene plays out) someone says something about the earth orbiting the sun (or the moon the earth) when Sherlock expresses surprise: “Is that so? I didn’t know that.” To which one of the other characters voices his astonishment: “How could a man of your uncommon intelligence & wide ranging knowledge, not be aware of such a common fact?” To which Holmes answers: “No, you are indeed right, I was in complete ignorance of the fact & I shall now endeavour to forget it as soon as I am able”
Knowledge outside one’s own field of interest