Symmetrical Hand Arrangements
Assignment L.08.11: No Man’s Land
I just found this. Â I cannot believe I never came across it before now. Â Just yesterday I ordered a DVD-R copy from a “source,” thinking it was the only way to obtain it.
Harold Pinter-No Man’s Land-John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson
This 1978 television version of the original stage production has never been released commercially. Â I do not know why. Â Maybe the BBC wants to have exclusive control over when and how it gets viewed. Â That is not surprising since it is a special sublime thing. Â It is sublime beyond sublime. Â The image, unfortunately, is poor on this transfer (I hope it will be better on the DVD I ordered–if I did in fact order it and not just cough into empty cyberspace), and I hope the sound allows for enjoying the language at least a little (I haven’t taken it in myself, yet).
I don’t yet want to turn into a school marm and lecture on why I think this is so special. Â I’d rather folks watch it and…experience.
Taking a Moment: David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace hanged himself:
The article does not mention he also played competitive tennis in his teens. Â My one impression of him from a Charlie Rose interview was of affable intensity and a desire to reveal a genuine thinking indecisiveness in his responses. Â I don’t know if anything can be gleaned from that observation.
I think it’s important for our survival as Lichtenbergians that we not be so quick to slip this one under the rug. Â America’s youngest monumentalist (I may have just coined that one) author is dead by his own hand. Â One can only wonder at this point. Â The peak looming in the background of our insignia is looking a bit more shadowy at present. Â A darkness we may need to feel our way through for a while.
An ape’s attic antics…
So I was wallowing and wandering in my archival attic as I put off my daily line C2020-703 learning session, and I came across a theme that might do nicely to hold together some of our ongoing Lichtenbergian concerns: Â Everything from the challenges of self-representation to seeking out criteria for artistic credibility can find a lip tickle orbit for discussion. Â It’s a link. Â Go there: C2040-408
http://www.lacunagroup.org/marc/?p=26#more-26
So as we continue with our current assignment, I thought it might also be rewarding to riff on this theme of the Ape.
L.08.8: (self-portrait) No time…
The object, the photo in this case, should clear out a space for contemplation. If it is successful, the viewer will be called to . And then read it to me. Tell me who I am. For God’s sake.
I will unveil two secret jokes not apparent in the result but part the process and certainly playing a part in the portrait from my point of view. My computer’s camera captures images as mirror reflections, so originally the titles of the books were truly “reflective” but downright dyslexic, a deciphering challenge. I decided, ultimately, that the challenge would not be worth the effort (in deference and tribute to my fellow Lichtenbergians). The other secret detail is that my photo editor includes an effect called “antique.” Seemed an apt click to make at the finish.
Assignment L08.7: Reply–>Reply–>Reply–>
The other day I received the following e-mail:
Hi – is this the Marc Honea who went Abelard elementary school and then spent teen years in Coweta county near Peachtree City?
If no – sorry! Â If yes – Hi Brigham Fairview here – would love to catch up!
BghmF
This kind of mail was a first for me.  All the facts were true (I’ve changed some names to respect privacy), but I was suspicious.  Yes, it would be a kick to catch up with Fairview–someone I haven’t seen since high school–but might not this be a strategy used by internet scammers either to gain personal info or send viruses?  It seemed to me it would be easy enough to assemble a bit of identifying info (why not by stealing info from people who use searches to track down old acquaintances, even?).  Or what if Fairview was exploiting old acquaintances to boost his Amway sales (something I have been on the receiving end of in the past)?  Or perhaps he or some scammer wanted to lure me into a questionable investment.  My disposition (and my naiveté, probably–a healthy dose of doubt prevents it from being diagnosed as paranoia, thank you very much) made it difficult to take the message at face value (plus, the word to was left out).  I sent the following reply:
 I am he.
But how do you know for sure?
And how do I know you are “the” Brigham Fairview?
Wouldn’t it be interesting if we both turn out to be Internet Scammers, neither of us truly who we claim to be, both of us now locked in a game of cat and mouse deception, each of us daring the other to take it a step further?
Fairview, if I remember, had a sense of humor. Â In his reply to this he managed to present enough evidence, including websites, to make me feel safe and silly. Â Blame it on my mother: Â People will walk all over you if you let them. Â And my father: Â People are no damn good.
But I like the premise I articulated in my message.  The Assignment, then:  what I imagine is a “story” that is just a series of e-mail messages with no commentary or explanation.  The reader would not know going in that this was a series of exchanges between two people pretending to be who they are not, neither knowing at the outset that the other is an impostor trying to exploit the other.  Dirty Rotten Scoundrels would be a useful film reference, but I think the “e-mail form” offers some unique possibilities at a more…microscopic level.  Good hunting.
Now are our brows bound…
More terms to use in our discussions on art. Â I’ve been reading a book by Susan Jacoby called The Age of American Unreason. Â It’s an extended and Jeremiad written with a nod to Hofstader’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. Â As a personal and autobiographical reflection, the book devotes some elegiac passages to the passing of what Jacoby sees as an important aspect of American life during the twentieth century, certainly one that shaped her own perspective and that of her generation: Â middlebrow culture.C4090-452
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Definition?  I want to keep it short and not seek out relevant passages to quote.  Let me offer what I hope is one vivid illustration instead.  Perhaps if you are over forty you will remember a family that invested in the series Great Books of the Western World.  No?  How about Encyclopaedia Britannica?  American middlebrow culture in a nutshell.  Not a pejorative, clearly.  But a characterization–the middlebrow–that conjures up a complex network of associations, some making us smile, some making us wince.  Jacoby does a nice job of setting up a useful context for experiencing a wide spectrum of connections and implications.
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Cannot help but raise the question of how we define highbrow and lowbrow, then, I suppose.  But I don’t want to take time to do that either.  Maybe you could offer something relevant in your comments.  I’m writing this post because I wonder if, now, there is such a thing as no-brow culture.  Perhaps we could say that this is part of the postmodern condition.  No longer is there a sense of hierarchy in how we distribute our appreciations or exercise our competencies or apply our creativity.  Is this development (if we’re willing to go with it) an illustration of democratization in action or something not remotely idealistic, utopian or welcome?  I would like to unpack further my thoughts about this by engaging comments.C4090-451
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L.08.5: Monomaniacal Masterpiece
Kyle Warez
–from New on DVD
Maxim Magazine
September 2008
The Children of the Dawn is now available on DVD, and one might learn some very interesting things by studying the demographics of the people who actually choose to purchase this exceedingly strange but admittedly monumental experiment in digital video recording and do so with the expectation of being entertained. This eight-disk set contains the complete work as it was first shown on a video monitor in a small room within MOMA in the autumn of 2007, and even in that urbane and adventurous setting, one would wonder about the motives of the few viewers who one could always see camped out in that very tiny space, those who had requested the special overnight passes and had committed to almost a day and a half of continuous viewing. Indeed, as with the original gallery installation, The Children of the Dawn on DVD will provoke for most of us questions about the mystery of what constitutes an audience and what compels a desire to consume something as entertainment or art. Those exclusive few who have made the full commitment are strangely silent about the mysteries with the work itself. Perhaps the control available in watching a DVD to stop viewing at will and resume at will might bring more viewers into willing contact with the work, but one must still wonder.
Just as one must wonder why writer and “performer†Marc Honea would choose such an eccentric form to “record†what is essentially a sprawling semi-historical novel. Honea’s method involves recording himself in a single static close-up shot on a digital camera. Addressing the camera lens directly, he acts out the entire story, speaking as over a hundred different characters, all addressing themselves directly to the camera. The sensations of scenes among characters and dialogue exchanges are created by cutting, but the shot never changes. Honea has merely adopted the face and voice of a new character who is, in turn, addressing the camera. Often the cutting among faces and voices is diabolically fast and creates a strange disorienting effect in the viewer that ‘must be experienced to be understood or, at least,…experienced. As a literary comparison, one is reminded of the almost exclusively dialogue-driven works of William Gaddis, and as with Gaddis there are occasional descriptive passages, but Honea delivers them to the viewer in the same fashion as he performs the story’s characters, adopting what he has called “physiognomaniacal abstractions,†a more extreme method of delivery which contrasts with the very believable playing of characters. And if one takes the work in small doses, which the DVD allows, you cannot help but be drawn in by Honea’s acting which, though relying much of the time on extreme facial and vocal manipulation and contortion, does draw the viewer into a kind of unique reality. Honea perfected this method in his 2004 digital video treatment of Thomas Costain’s 1955 novel The Tontine. As to the “why†of this method, it is hard to know how to interpret what Honea said in an interview from 2005: “The only thing I’ve ever worked at consistently is making faces in the bathroom mirror while talking in funny voices. Everything else has felt like pretending.â€
Such is the method that Honea uses to perform The Children of the Dawn, and he persists with it without wavering for thirty-three and a half hours, for fifty-seven chapters and an epilogue. Part of Honea’s intent is to create a kaleidoscopic, surreal cavalcade that makes stops through most of the twentieth century, but most of the story’s action takes place in London in the late Sixties and focuses on the lives of two prominent musicians in two very prominent and legendary rock and roll bands. Honea has offered the following on the story’s origins:
“I was at a party and people were trying to compare Led Zeppelin with The Rolling Stones, and as a result some people were led to say some really stupid things about both bands. I begin to feel a knot in my stomach and had to say that comparing Zeppelin and The Stones was like comparing apples and oranges. The hostess of the party agreed with me and I felt a tremendous amount of relief. That got me to thinking about how one might go about describing accurately the difference between the music and the overall vibe of these two bands. My shorthand distinction became ‘material and mystical.’ And I was rather happy with that until I started thinking about Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page in particular and how they both rubbed shoulders with American filmmaker, “magus,†and Aleister Crowley acolyte Kenneth Anger. In other words, two very different imaginations were dipping into the same pools, not only through a reverence for the Blues but also through this very theatricalized occult sensibility. How did my neatly formulated ‘material and mystical’ divergence fit into that? I came up with a few fictional identities and some imaginary discographies and let it start to play out…”
And play out it does. On and on it plays. For hours. A maddening, crazed, brilliant exercise; a naively simple technique etching out an exceedingly involved, panoramic epic tale…
Assignment L.08.5: Critical Receptions
For some reason the Caleb Larsen web site brought this one to mind. Here’s the assignment: imagine you have done some piece of creative work (which, of course, you haven’t…have you) and write a review or piece of criticism of that work from the point of view of some reviewer or commentator, fictional or actual (you choose–let your lawyer guide you), writing for some fictional or actual publication. The critic’s response can be favorable or not. It must be a made-up work (Dale can’t imagine a critical response to the Symphony, for instance, since that actually exists–or is actually coming into existence, or so he says). I think such reviews and responses should begin to litter our blog flow from time to time over the next few months. And in our comments to the posts, let’s treat the work as real and respond accordingly by perhaps agreeing or disagreeing with what has been written, adding our own details to “the work in question” as we see fit. Dress it up however you wish. Scholarly or popular critical modes. Photos? Quotes? Citations? Comparisons to both real and other equally fictitious works? “Some piece of creative work” is meant to be broad and all-encompassing. You can just as easily see yourself as some Larsen-like creature as you can imagine yourself to be America’s next important writer.