Nov

19

Links, 11/19/08

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Just a few links - still reading lots of Xenophon, still concerned about how this section is going to get written. I’m at a loss for words right now.

  • Love in the Time of Darwinism - agree with most of this, but the author does say at one point that maybe dating isn’t hell. She’s got no clue just how hurt many of us are, despite her frequent mentions of the word “anger.” The article is at its best when it documents confusion, as opposed to trying to assign blame to males or females.
  • Spreading this link can result in severe harassment - I’ve already been insulted in a threatening manner by a person on a site for sharing it. In case you’re curious about this issue, which I think is entirely independent of one’s views on Proposition 8 at this point, there’s an even more right-wing article - if you can stomach it - documenting the anti-8 crowd’s behavior incident-by-incident. Obviously, I am interested in balance, the issue for me is the climate of violence: if you find anything that smacks of discrimination against gays (besides 8 itself), let me know.
  • George Will, against the automaker bailout: you may need to use bugmenot to access this. If you’re from the Washington Post and reading this, I can safely tell you I don’t read your crummy paper because it is behind that registration wall. This is a rare exception.

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Nov

19

First Friday in Philadelphia, 11/7/2008: On Schubert’s Quintet D. 956, Op. Posth. 163

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1. It’s been two weeks, but I felt I could wait for the sake of saying an appropriate thank you to the Poor Richard’s String Quartet - Michael Finckel, Thomas Kraines, Andrea Schultz, Beverly Shin and David Yang - who played in Christ Church that night. I’m no good at writing music criticism, so I bought a recording of the piece performed, Schubert’s Quintet in C Major, D 956 Op. Posthumous 163, and have been listening to it nearly every day in order to figure out something to say.

Any comment on the performance would be incomplete without mentioning the stop Paul and I made at Artist’s House before it. The art was of incredible technical skill, but much of it was from people around my age, and it was lacking in a key respect: it was as if the artists, for the most part, had nothing to say. Perhaps Katherine Fraser’s work was emblematic of it generally: she clearly is a superior painter. But if you look at her piece “The Modern Woman,” it’s impossible not to come up with the critique Paul managed in a matter of seconds - (paraphrasing) “her hair is shorn, the dress hides her sexuality, she’s holding a skull that reminds us of O’Keefe. Oh look, despite her attempts to be sexless, there’s a calendar, reminding us of the cycle that she must endure biologically no matter how many externals she changes.”

“Cliched” is too kind a word. The engagement of the fine arts with mass media - making poster-like/Myspace background type paintings - seemed to be my generation’s way of showing off their talents, nothing more.

2. The Quintet was a mature piece played by professionals slightly older than many of the artists at the gallery. The most powerful thing about the performance was its maturity - not a single note was wasted, and it was clear that everyone playing was determined to make their instrument sing the line so as to create the whole: “Keeps all his goings graces.”

This Quintet is the stuff of legend, I found out while looking up music criticism on it. It is an hour’s worth of music, and is one of the last pieces Schubert wrote. It moves back and forth a variety of ways - from loud to soft and back and forth describes all the movements. But to be more specific: the opening Allegro starts with a tender, vigorous theme. The Adagio that follows gets quiet and contemplative for a while before switching to a minor key. The Scherzo is by contrast a grand recovery, but not quite a triumphal march: it’s too elegant, and matches the subtlety of the Trio within. The Allegretto the piece ends with is almost a dance, except by this point the listener has been saturated such that every note holds extra weight. It is a dance, but one of competing progressions within the music: the tension isn’t dark, but one does sit in suspense at how the music will resolve. Quite powerfully and perhaps blissfully, it turns out.

In outline, then, what you have is some kind of mini-epic. There are piano pieces like this - while it dwells on one theme almost exclusively, Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasie is a place to look. The primary feeling one gets is that a range of related phrases are being explored thoroughly: no stone is left unturned in the search for the best music possible.

It sounds weird to say that maturity is an intellectual endeavor, whether implicit or explicit, and I think that’s why I’m sticking to the “they don’t have anything to say” story regarding the criticism before. It’s not clear to me that if you have anything to say that you’re an intellectual. What is clear is that if you do have something to say, you’ve provided room for those of us who care to think, and perhaps we can converse about what matters.

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Nov

16

A Waste of Resources: The GOP’s New “Republican for a Reason” Site

Filed Under politics | 18 Comments 

“Republican for a Reason” - Just look at it and you’ll see my main complaint. Does anything about that site’s garish design, needing to make an account, and focus on utterly worthless issues (candidates don’t read the party platforms) appeal to you? Do you really want to go there and post in the forums and be heard by people you don’t know and don’t really care to know?

If the GOP wants to hear from the grassroots, they’ll tear down that site, and just put up a blog where they link to various blogposts they agree with or think are thoughtful from around the web. The grassroots is saying plenty already, and the GOP can issue disclaimers saying that they only consider the various posts thoughtful, and they don’t necessarily agree with the content or all of the author’s other work.

Imagine how much buzz that blog would create in a matter of seconds. It would bring together a lot of right-wing bloggers that are a very loose network right now, and get their audiences to meet each other in earnest. Then activism could begin with a scope hitherto unrealized: remember, there were 47 million votes for McCain.

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Nov

15

Tagging in Progress

Filed Under blogging | 2 Comments 

Some of you have noticed that I’m streamlining and updating tags all throughout the blog. This is not an easy process: 200 tags were eliminated, with still more cuts to come, but a few are being added.

Moreover, out of 44 pages of entries, only 8 or 9 have been tagged to my satisfaction, and there are mistakes.

It’s gonna take some time for this to work out, but if you see a post that you know is badly tagged, let me know so I can work on it. I’d rather skip around a bit than reread nearly every entry in backwards sequence.

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Nov

14

Do I Get to be Proud of 100,000 Pageviews?

Filed Under blogging | 2 Comments 

Granted, it took 13 months. And there are blogs and sites getting 20,000 unique visitors a day that people online barely know about.

But you know what? I’ve experienced firsthand from the net how many people are resistant to learning, resistant to reading carefully and well, resistant to anything that’s different, new, or - worst of all - thoughtful.

100,000 pageviews is an enormous success even if it did take 13 months. This is a world where Britney Spears and Paris Hilton influence more than Plato or maybe even the Bible. If I have my way, there will be another 100,000 pageviews in less than a month: I just have to keep fighting, getting the link out there, and linking to other bloggers. Some of you have noticed that the number of “friends” in the blogroll is growing, and that trend is going to continue for a while longer, I think.

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