22 posts tagged “core”

Usually I like to finish a book before I write about it in the blog but this one is particularly fascinating and who knows, once school starts in a week, what time I will have for reading and writing.

The other day, I was “cracked open” by a song. I can only assume that you can relate. It was sort of like someone slipping a key into my brain and unlocking a thought or an emotion or both that had been trapped in there. One second I was fine. Two lines into the song, I was crying. I don’t know about you but when things like that happen to me, I get curious. So yesterday, I started reading Daniel Levitin’s book This is Your Brain on Music. I will just say that it is fascinating. I want to just come over and read the whole thing to you. Grin.

But here are some excerpts.

“This direct mapping of pitches so important, it bears are repeating.  If I put electrodes in your visual cortex (the part of the brain at the back of the head, concerned with seeing), and I then showed you a red tomato, there is no group of neurons that will cause my electrodes to turn red.  But if I put electrodes in your auditory cortex and play a pure tone in your ears at 440 Hz, there are neurons in your auditory cortex that will fire at precicely that frequency, causing the electrode emit electrical activity at 440 Hz- for pitch, what goes into the ear and comes out of the brain!” p. 29

“When the sound is generated on a piano, flute, or any other instrument -- including percussion instruments like drums and cowbells -- it produces many modes of vibration occurring simultaneously.  When you listen to a single note played on an instrument, you're actually hearing many, many pitches at once, not a single pitch.  Most of us are not aware of this consciously, although some people can train themselves to hear that.  The one with the slowest vibration rate -- the one lowest in pitch -- is referred to as the fundamental frequency, and the others are collectively called overtones. 

To recap, it is a property of objects in the world that they generally vibrate at several different frequencies at once.  Surprisingly these other frequencies are often mathematically related to each other in a very simple way: as integer multiples of one another.  So if you pluck a string and its slowest vibration frequency is 100 times per second, the other vibration frequencies will be two times 100 (or 200 Hz), 3X times 100 Hz (300 hertz), etc..  If you blow into a flute or recorder and cause vibrations at 310 Hz, additional vibration will be occurring at twice, three times, four times, etc. this rate …

The brain is so attuned to the overtone series that if we encounter a sound that has all of the components except the fundamental, the brain fills it in for us in a phenomenon called restoration of the missing fundamental. A sound composed of energy at 100 Hz, 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz, and 500 Hz is perceived as having a pitch of 100 Hz, its fundamental frequency.  But if we artificially create a sound with an energy at 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz, and 500 Hz leaving off the fundamental, we still perceive it as having a pitch of 100 Hz.  We don't perceive it as having a pitch of 200 Hz, because our brain “knows” that a normal, harmonic sound with a pitch of 200 Hz would have an overtones series of 200 Hz, 400 Hz, 600 Hz, 800 Hz, etc. we can also fool the brain by playing sequences that deviate from the overtones series . . . in cases like this, the perceived pitch shift is away from 100 Hz in a compromise between what is presented and what a normal harmonic series would imply.” P. 42-43

“The introduction of energy to an instrument – the attack phase- usually creates energy at many different frequencies that are not related to one another by simple integer multiples.  In other words, for the brief period after we strike, blow into, pluck, or otherwise cause an instrument to start making sound, the impact itself has a rather noisy quality that is not especially musical -- more like the sound of a hammer hitting a piece of wood, say, than like a hammer hitting a bell or piano string, or like the sound of wind rushing through a tube.  Following the attack is a more stable phase in which the musical tone takes on the orderly pattern of overtone frequencies as the metal or wood or other material at the instrument is made up arts to resonate.  This little part of musical tone is referred to as the steady state -- in both instances the overtone is notably stable while the sound emanates from the instrument during this time.

“… After Shafer edited out the attack of orchestral instrument recordings, he played back the tape and found that it was nearly impossible for most people to identify the instrument that was playing.  Without the attack, pianos and bells sounded remarkably unlike pianos and bells, and remarkably similar to one another.  If you splice the attack of one instrument into the steady state, or body, from another, you get varied results: in some cases, you hear an ambiguous hybrid instrument that sounds more like the instruments that the attack came from than the one the steady state came from.  Michael Castellengo and others have discovered that you can create entirely new instruments in this way; for example, splicing a violin bow sound onto a flute tone creates a sound that strongly resembles a hurdy-gurdy street organ.  The experiment showed the importance of the attack” p. 54-53.   

What is so interesting to me is how it reminds me that none of us “hear” the same thing when we hear. Even if our eardrums vibrate in the same way, our brains are rascals to us. It is entirely possible for us to “hear” things that were NEVER played! (Men have known this for centuries. Grin). The facts are clear. Something can be taken OUT of a message and if the piece removed is expected, it will still be “heard”. Designed to help, our brains can deceive. Whatever the FIRST thing heard is, may control how everything AFTER is heard. As he says, if you splice the attack sound of a bell onto the steady state of a Tuba, you may just find that the whole sound, is heard as a bell. Sometimes, your brain doesn't wait to hear what the attack leads it to expect. How IMPORTANT is THAT analogy for resolving conflicts, I ask you?

One of the experiments the author talks about involves actual sound recordings of owl brains (some people get paid to do the weirdest things!) Because sound frequencies get translated into electrical frequencies in the brain, a person with the right equipment can record the electrical frequencies and play back the sound as transmitted through brain signals. That way, you can literally take frequencies OUT of the input and listen to them after the brain has re-inserted them.

No one who has ever had a marital argument should be without this piece of scientific evidence. Heaven only knows how many times I may find myself using it from here on out. ;-)  

What I am looking forward to exploring in the book, to get back to my original question, is just whether or not music literally performs a "chiropractic adjustment" in our neural wiring. Is it possible that music is as important to our brains as say, sleep, or food? Did the "combination" of words, timbre, melody, pitch, rhythm, tempo, volume, key, or reverberation just put the tumblers in place? Or is there a higher power at work here?

I find it interesting that I am not one who is typically "moved" by music though I listen to it all day long. Something Levitin said about a friend of his struck a cord (no pun intended):

“Our culture, and indeed our very language, makes a distinction between a class of expert performers -- the Arthur Rubinstein's, Ella Fitzgeralds, Paul McCartneys -- and the rest of us.  The rest of us pay money to hear the experts entertain us.  Jim knew that he wasn't much of a singer or a dancer and to him, a public display of singing and dancing implied he thought himself an expert.  The villagers just stared at Jim and said, ‘what do you mean you don't sing?!  You talk!’  Jim told me later, ‘it was as odd to them as if I told them that I couldn't walk or dance, even though I have both my legs.’  Singing and dancing were a natural activity in everybody's lives, seamlessly integrated and involving everyone.  The Sesotho verb for singing (ho bina), as in many of the world's languages, also means to dance; there is no distinction, since it is assumed that singing involves bodily movement.” P. 7

It makes me wonder, what did we lose when we started turning on TV's (I don't have one) and stopped playing music together and dancing?

One last quote that I absolutely hope to never forget:

“The Catholic Church banned music that contained polyphony (more than one musical part playing at a time), fearing that it would cause people to doubt the unity of God.” P. 13

Banning polyphony. That is just going to have to go on my list of the 10 dumbest things the church ever did. I mean ... How many beings are there in a TRINITY people? Sigh. What if God cannot be heard WITHOUT the polyphony?

It is not hard to see how this connects to things I have written about Toni Morrison's writings or various artists like Cezanne.

Question for Comment: When was the last time you got "torn open" by a song? Do you prefer to look at what is happening in your brain when that happens? Or does that take the essential mystery of it all out of the experience for you? Can a person believe in both the brain physics of the experience without discounting that there might be some ONE behind it as well?

Beginning in the Fall of 2007, every incoming Freshman at Champlain college takes a course called Concepts of Self in which they examine the subject of identity creation. Many students naturally think at the ripe old age of 18 or 19 that they already know themselves (Socrates chuckles) and that they do not need the course. As fate would have it, one of my tasks over this coming year is to help develop a course for transfer students that covers the material that they will have missed in this first year.

I could say much about the process of my thinking on that score but today, I want to examine the arguments of one of the required texts in this course. Recall that all 630 or so Freshmen will be assigned this reading. I quote from Chapter Nine of David Lindon’s book the Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God (2007).

Chapter Nine: The Unintelligent Design of the Brain

“William Dembski of the Southern Baptist theological seminary, another well known intelligent design proponent, has stated, “Intelligent design readily embraces a sacramental nature of physical reality.  Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory”

In its public face, intelligent design has been cleverly crafted to appear as a legitimate scientific theory with no ties to a specific religious agenda.  This gives political cover to politicians and school board members who can adopt a tone of fairness in saying, “Let's present their students with both sides of this fascinating scientific debate.  For example, in March 2002, US Senator Rick Santorum (Republican of Pennsylvania) said, “Proponents of intelligent design are not trying to teach religion via science, but are trying to establish the validity of their theory as a scientific alternative to Darwinism.”  In August 2005, President George W. Bush weighed in: “Both sides ought to be properly taught ... so people can understand what the debate is about.”

If you believe that life was designed by an intelligent force (whether that be the Judeo-Christian God, angels, the Allah of Islam, or even extraterrestrials), then the human brain, presumed the seat of reason, morality, and faith, is the obvious test case to reveal this design.  After all, this 2.5 pound lump of tissue can solve problems in recognition, categorization, social interaction, and many other areas that routinely baffle the world's most sophisticated supercomputers.  These supercomputers are designed and programmed by teams of extremely talented hardware and software engineers.  Doesn't this imply that the brain was designed by an even more skillful engineer? . . .”

“The claim that specified complexity cannot arise through random mutation and selection is a specious argument.  The critique from information theory, that new information cannot be generated by the evolutionary process, would hold only if the evolutionary process were charged with matching an independently given pattern. This is not the case.  The evolutionary process does not strive to build pre-specified complex structures such as eyes, kidneys, or brains.  It has no goal.  The only driving force of evolution is reproductive success and the related issues of kin selection and the reproductive success of one's offspring.  If building complex structures increases reproductive fitness, then they may arise. But if destroying complex structures also increases reproductive fitness, then complex structures can just as easily be destroyed or altered (as happened when the eyes of cave dwelling fish became nonfunctional.)

So where does this leave the intelligent design movement?  Essentially it leaves its proponents saying: “Look at that thing. It is just too cool not to have been actively designed. . . .”

“Is the evidence for design in biological systems so obvious?  I hold that the brain, the ultimate test case, is, in many respects, a true design nightmare.  Let's review a bit.  When we compare the human brain to that of other vertebrates, it becomes clear that the human brain has mostly developed through an agglomeration.  The difference between the lizard brain and the mouse brain does not involve a wholesale redesign.  Rather, the mouse brain is basically the lizard brain with some extra stuff thrown on top.  Likewise the human brain is basically the mouse brain with still more stuff piled on top.  That's how we wind up with two visual systems into auditory systems (one ancient and one modern) jammed into our heads.  The brain is built like an ice cream cone with new scoops piled on at each stage of our lineage.

Accidental design is even more obvious at the cellular level of the brain.  The job of neurons is to integrate and propagate electrical signals.  Yet, in almost all respects, neurons do a bad job.  They propagate their signal slowly (a million times more slowly than copper wires), their signaling range is tiny (0 to 1,200 spikes/second), they leak signals to their neighbors, and, on average, they successfully propagate their signals to the targets only about 30% of the time.  As electrical devices, the neurons in the brain are extremely inefficient.

So, at either of the systems or the cellular level, the human brain, which the intelligent design crowd would imagine to be the most highly designed bit of tissue on the planet, is essentially a Rube Goldberg contraption.  Not surprisingly, some proponents of intelligent design have left themselves a way to retreat on this point.  Michael Behe writes, “Features that strike us as odd in a design might have been placed there by the designer for reason -- for artistic reasons, for variety, to show off, for some as yet undetectable practical purpose or for some unguessable reason -- or they might not.”  Or, stated another way, if on first glimpse biological systems look cool, that must be the result of intelligent design.  If, on closer inspection biological systems look like cobbled together contraptions, that has still got to be from intelligent design, just intelligent design with an offbeat sense of humor.  Clearly, this position is not a true, falsifiable scientific hypothesis, as is the theory of evolution.  The idea of intelligent design is merely an assertion.

“Perhaps the problem is the gee-whiz factor.  It is indeed deeply and profoundly amazing that there is a tissue such as a human brain that confers our very humanness.  It is not surprising that, for some, pondering the awe-inspiring concept of the mind-in-the-brain leads to a religious, faith-based (untestable, unfalsifiable) explanation rather than a scientific, faith-based (testable, falsifiable) hypothesis.  What is interesting here is that though there are many different ways to get the story wrong, the intelligent design group has got it exactly, explicitly 180° wrong.  The transcendent aspects of our human experience, the things that touch our emotional and cognitive core, were not given to us by a great engineer.  These are not the latest design features of an impeccably crafted brain.  Rather at every turn, brain design has been a kludge, a workaround, a jumble, a pastiche.  The things we hold highest in our human experience (love, memory, dreams, and a predisposition for religious thought) result from a particular agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled onto millions of years of evolutionary history.  It is not that we have fundamentally human thoughts and feelings despite the kludgy design of the brain as molded by the twists and turns of evolutionary history.  Rather, we have them precisely because of that history. ”

To simplify the argument into terms that any first grader can understand, “goo to you through the zoo”. What Lindon adds to the argument is a lot of first rate science AND the assertion that those things that we regard as somehow "sacred" (love, God, dreams, personality, etc.) are really just more or less symptoms of a purely materialistic existence.

I have to state at this point that this is not the first time that I will find myself teaching with a textbook that I may find myself in a “dialog” with. I recall using one World History textbook that explained the origins of Christianity in the following terms. As you read, ask yourself, "are these historians telling students what happened in the past or are they just using their interpretation of history to argue for a philosophical position they hold in the present?"

Here are the selections: From Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics & Society, 3rd ed., p.137.

“During the second century AD., Greco-Roman civilization lost its creative energies, and the values of classical humanism were challenged by mythic-religious movements. No longer regarding reason as a satisfying guide to life, the educated elite subordinated the intellect to feelings and an unregulated imagination. . . . The application of reason to nature and society, as we have seen, was the great achievement of the Greek mind. But despite its many triumphs, Greek rationalism never entirely subdued the mythic religious mentality, which draws its strength from human emotion. The masses of peasants and slaves remained attracted to religious forms. Ritual, mystery, magic, and ecstasy never lost their hold on the ancient world – nor indeed have they in our own technological and scientific society. During the Hellenistic age the tide of rationalism gradually receded, and the non-rational, an ever present undercurrent, showed renewed vigor. . . . Seeing themselves as isolated souls wandering aimlessly in a social desert, people sought refuge in religion. Reason had been found wanting. The time for faith and salvation was at hand.  . . . A spiritual malaise had descended upon the Greco-Roman world. Among the upper classes, the philosophic and scientific spirit withered; rational and secular values were in retreat. . . . Stressing the intellect and self reliance, Greco Roman thought did not provide for the emotional needs of people. Christianity addressed itself to this defect in the Greco Roman outlook . . . The triumph of Christianity was related to a corresponding decline in the vitality of Hellenism and a shift in cultural emphasis – a movement from reason to emotion and revelation. Offering comfortable solutions to the existential problems of life and death, religion demonstrated a greater capability to stir human hearts than reason did. Hellenism had invented the tools of rational thought, but the power of mythical thought was never entirely subdued. By the late Roman Empire, science and philosophy were unable to compete with mysticism and myth. . . . Christian truth ultimately rested on faith not reason.”

Both the Lindon text on neuroscience and the Western Civilizations text by Perry, et. al. attempt to take the epistemological high ground, insisting that though there are many ways of knowing, the way that uses unadulterated reason is superior. That which uses intuition is inferior, flawed, suspect, primitive, childish, irresponsible.

What does this mean for an 18 or 19 year old who is constructing a concept of self? I would suggest that it means everything. Indeed, the American form of government (democracy) was originally founded on a theological proposition that all men were “created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights”. If all men are really only kluges though, we can only assume that a new system will have to be constructed on that fundamental assumption. Does a Kluge have inalienable rights if a government decides to rescind them? One’s concept of self will soon affect one’s concept of community. It is inevitable. Lindon’s argument is that it is our brains that bestow on us our humanity (and I assume thereby our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). Nothing outside of our selves bestows a status on us that would distinguish us from mushrooms and French fries.

What remains to be seen is if a society so dedicated on such principles can or will be able to maintain the sort of communal life in which science can be pursued or if it eventually leads us to some Hobbesian Rwanda. The words of C.S. Lewis come to mind:

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ an demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” C.S. Lewis, “Men without Chests”

What I suspect is that many of the people who will be teaching this course and this book may not know exactly how it could truly serve as a wedge between families and their own children ... or between students and their traditional religious communities. One need only look at the book that my very own dear mother wrote to help parents and teachers explain the mysteries of God's natural world to see this. I would be the embodiment of such a conflicted student if I were taking the class. I wonder if faculty have really considered the relational damage that can be done from not treating this subject sensitively (and by that I do NOT mean AVOIDING a text like Lindon's). I am looking forward to seeing how I will teach this course and this book in particular. I feel somewhat like Obadiah.

Question for Comment: How would you live your life differently if it was catagorically proven that your brain is "kludge" - a result of a series of accidental mutations? Or visa versa, if it was proven that it had to have been designed by some higher power? Does the question interest you? Affect you? Consume you? Are there any questions that are MORE important. I have a memory of sitting in a faculty meeting in which these issues were being discussed and listening to one particularly adamant faculty member insisting that faculty "could not back down" on this issue. As though one should assume that there would have to be a gunfight at the OK Coral about it sometime. Is this so?

As I write this I am listening to the San Fransisco Symphony Orchestra play the Eroica by Ludvig Von Beethoven. I am coming to love this piece of music. Last night I watched another documentary about it and came up with a few more gems to think about. One of the things I love about it is how it tries to, in a sense, write a biography of a heroic life in music. It begins with great promise and aspiration. It reveals the heros suffering and even seeming death and despair. Towards the end of the second movement, we can feel the hero, phoenix like, rising from the grave, the despondency to future life and greatness. Back and forth ... back and forth ... the heroes fortunes and emotions wander. Sometimes joyful and peaceful. Sometimes dark and stormy. Sometimes in love, Sometimes rejected. Its almost like you wish you could see a time-line of Beethoven's emotional life superimposed on the movement in the music.  

Its as if a ton of concrete said to a grass seed "I weigh a ton and I am sitting on you" and the grass seed says to the concrete "I'm alive."

One little element that I absolutely LOVE is at the beginning of the fourth movement where Beethoven includes this goofy little "taunt music". It almost seems elementary ... like hearing a kid's playground tune "Martha and Michael sittin in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G" in the opening of an Italian Opera. What is so funny about it is that Beethoven is reveling in the mastery of this medium. I can't help but think of Toby Keith's song "How Do You Like Me Now?"

I was always the crazy one
I broke into the stadium
And I wrote your number on the 50 yard line
You were always the perfect one
And the valadictorian so
Under your number I wrote "call for a good time"

I only wanted to catch your attention
But you overlooked me somehow
Besides you had too many boyfriends to mention
And I played my guitar too loud.

How do you like me now?
How do you like me now,
Now that I'm on my way?
Do you still think I'm crazy
Standin here today?
I couldnt make you love me
But I always dreamed about living in your radio
How do you like me now?

When I took off to Tennessee
I heard that you made fun of me
Never imagined I'd make it this far
Then you married into money girl
Aint it a cruel and funny world?
He took your dreams and tore them apart.

He never comes home
And youre always alone
And your kids hear you cryin down the hall
Alarm clock starts ringin
Who could that be singin
Its me baby, with your wake up call!

How do you like me now?
How do you like me now,
Now that I'm on my way?
Do you still think I'm crazy
Standin here today?
I couldnt make you love me
But I always dreamed about living in your radio
How do you like me now?

Tell me baby...
I will preach on...

It is important to hear the back-story on this portion of Beethoven's Eroica to understand.

No sense re-inventing the wheel. Here is an abbreviated version of the story:

A native of Berlin, Daniel Steibelt was one of Europe's most renowned piano virtuosos. He was a typical Prussian - formal, correct, proper. In 1800 he came to Vienna, no doubt with the aim of advancing his musical reputation.

It was quickly agreed among the city's musical patrons that Steibelt should compete against Beethoven in an improvisation contest.

These improvisation contests were a popular form of entertainment among Vienna's aristocracy. One nobleman would support one virtuoso pianist, another would support the other. In the salon of one of the noblemen, the two pianists would compete with each other, each setting the other a tune to improvise on.

The playing would go back and forth, increasing in intensity, until a winner was declared. In his early years in Vienna, Beethoven was made to take on the city's best talent and he quickly saw them off.

It was agreed that Prince Lobkowitz would sponsor Steibelt and Prince Lichnowsky sponsor Beethoven, the improvisation contest to take place in Lobkowitz's palace.

As the challenger, Steibelt was to play first. He walked to the piano, tossing a piece of his own music on the side, and played. Steibelt was renowned for conjuring up a "storm" on the piano, and this he did to great effect, the "thunder" growling in the bass.

He rose to great applause, and all eyes turned to Beethoven, who took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and reluctantly - to the collective relief of everyone present - trudged to the piano.

When he got there he picked up the piece of music Steibelt had tossed on the side, looked at it, showed it the audience ..... and turned it upside down!

He sat at the piano and played the four notes in the opening bar of Steibelt's music. He began to vary them, embellish them ..... improvise on them.

He played on, imitated a Steibelt "storm", unpicked Steibelt's playing and put it together again, parodied it and mocked it.

Steibelt, realizing he was not only being comprehensively outplayed but humiliated, strode out of the room. Prince Lobkowitz hurried after him, returning a few moments later to say Steibelt had said he would never again set foot in Vienna as long as Beethoven lived there.

Beethoven lived in Vienna for the rest of his life, and Steibelt kept his promise - he never returned.

Beethoven was never again asked to take on any piano virtuoso - his position as Vienna's supreme piano virtuoso was established. And those four notes - the first bar of Steibelt's music? They became, in time, the impetus that drives the Eroica Symphony.

http://www.madaboutbeethoven.com/pages/people_and_places/people_patrons/people_patrons_steibelt.htm

It is these basic notes, turned upside down and played with Peanuts character Schroeder-like 'plinking' simplicity that start off the fourth movement of Eroica. In so many ways, this reminds me of all the subliminal messages Michelangelo puts into his Sistine Chapel to torment his adversary the Pope or how Toni Morrison turns writing conventions on their head to tell the society that gives her the Pulitzer for doing it, "Actually, You are wrong about some basic things". To me, it is as if to say, "Look, I may have been through a lot in life and I have had my crushing defeats and I might have even lost my hearing and the love of my life won't marry me because she's an aristocrat and I am not everything I planned to be at the beginning of this heroic life, but on this field, in this medium, I can take the next closest competitor with half my brain tied behind my back and though I suffer, and have suffered, I can still play with my opponents and you ... and celebrate my talent."

Anyway, that is how I imagine it to be and music lets you do that.

“Towards the close of the first act, in the interval succeeding an Italian song, she explained the words of the song to Mr. Elliott.  – they had a concert bill between them

This, she said, is nearly the sense, or rather the  meaning of the words, for certainly the sense of  an Italian love song must not be talked of.”  Jane Austen, Persuasion

Question for Comment: Do you live your life Heroically? I mean, do you see yourself as a heroic caracter in this story that you are living out, rising above insurmountable obstacles, living through your griefs, expecting that through it all, nothing can bury you forever in the end..

OK. I am almost hesitant to make this one public. I am in the process of putting together a course in Middle Eastern History and another in Contemporary World Religions and basically, I order and watch everything I can get that I think will give me new perspectives. The movie I watched tonight is, without question, a controversial one. Islam: What the west Needs to Know.

It creatively intersperses quotes of world leaders (Bush, Blair, Harry Ried, Clinton, etc.) with academics and advocates of a more thorough understanding of the roots of Islamic fundamentalism. I will cut to the chase, their argument is somewhat an ironic one. (And they do not make it in these words). Their argument is that just as the Crusades were something of an aberration of the CORE teachings of Christ - something that eventually HAD to be corrected by a better understanding of the Gospels - the modern notion that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance is simply a result of looking at an aberration as well. The argument of this documentary is that moderate tollrant, democratic, liberal Islam is an Islam that is "off its track" that is not functioning as its founder intended.

See what I mean when I say "controversial"? And I say that as one who engages in conversation with what I would call moderate (no, let me say "likable, decent, tolerant, fun, insightful, convivial, and pleasant") Muslims regularly. How does this dichotomy come to be? According to the contributors on this documentary (and I have some reason from my own study of Islam to agree) there are different phases in Muhammad's life that have embedded themselves into the Qur'an. If, for example, you were to take the things that I affirmed in my public expressions of faith from the time that I was four to the time when I was 35, you might get a differently flavored message than what you would get if you heard me "out" my ideas sometime in the last decade.

Essentially, Muhammad had a period of his life in Mecca where he was vulnerable, weak, and often conciliatory. Later, after removing himself to Medina and building a power base there, a slightly different message emerges. Allah Himself brings about abrogations to earlier expressions. Later expressions are to replace older. It is THIS chronology of differentiation that the contributors to Islam: What the West Needs to Know are insisting on looking into.

One might ask many interesting questions. Are the contributors right? And if they are, what if moderate Islam has decided it likes itself even if it is inconsistent with some of the things Muhammad said in is Medinan Surahs? What is Islam? Is it what its prophet said early in his life, later in his life? Or whichever of the two modern Muslims prefer? Other questions arise. Is a movie that clearly takes the approach that Muslims - all Muslims are potentially dangerous and likely to revert to original programming in time something that should be shown in American Religion classes. I mean, essentially, this movie accuses them all of being potential "Cylon sleeper agents".

If nothing else, the film reminds me of the importance of my work ... and of my desire to have more Muslim friends, not less. I do not wish to be a victim to my latest movie's agenda.

Question for Comment: What are your core belifs. Is your life presently consistent with them? Why or why not?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died today. His book, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich continues to be one of my all-time favorite pieces of dissenting literature. Solzhenitsyn was allowed to publish the novel because it appeared to be a critique of Stalinism but if you read with eyes to see, it clearly is a critique of the Soviet system itself. The life in the Gulag becomes a parable of the life outside the gulag in so many ways. In a system that completely forbids inequality, Ivan Denisovich makes it clear why some men cannot be reduced to equality. Even as a prisoner, stripped of all capital, all freedom, all hoe of profit, Ivan Denisovich works harder, works smarter, applies his superior intuition to the task of getting more rations, reads his surroundings better, negotiates deals better, protects his interests better, lies better, saves his assets more wisely, and tells a better story. In short, the things that Ivan Denisovich does to survive in the Gulag when other men don't - the things that allow him to achieve an extra bowl of porridge or a surplus piece of bread, are the very things that would have allowed him to be the CEO of Enron, Microsoft, or Dell. Ironically, one could read a Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a story about a man with nothing in a place with no future, and learn just about everthing they needed to know about how to succeed in a business of just about any kind.

I would love to write a book entitled Ivan Denisovich's Guide to Success in a Capitalist System.

The thing I find most fascinating about the book is that it does its job in total contradiction to the goals of the system that allowed him to do it. In that respect, it reminds me much of Beethoven's Eroica and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel  and Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems and the parables of Jesus among the other great works of dissenting literature.  How does one write something completely revolutionary and get it approved, indeed, even paid for by the people you disagree with?

It reminds me of a soccer coach I had in high school who used to make us do heading drills. He would punt a ball up in the air as high as he could and we would stand in a circle and try to head it out. Well, I had glasses and if you missed these meteors even by a fraction of an inch, they could drive the lenses into your retinas so I mastered the art of looking like I was trying to head balls that I would always miss. It takes a great deal of athleticism to pull this off. And in a similar way, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich seems to support Khrushchev's case while it really undermines it.

Question for Comment: Have you ever been able to succeed in a capitalist system? Why or why not? In the book Ivan continues to work on a cement wall even though he could be severely punished for not getting in the lineup to head for the barracks. He does so because he cares about his work. Have you ever cared about your work so much that you were willing to suffer something to do it well?

Skyler suggested that it would be fun to teach a college course on the ideas in Battlestar Galactica and I confess, the idea has been rattling around in my brain ever since. One could easily cover material for a Contemporary World Issues course, a Philosophy and Religion course, an Ethics course, or even a course Politics, Psychology, and Law I suppose.

Consider the possibilities. The 12 Colonies of Kobol seem to have their origins in a lost colony of ancient  Greeks or Romans. They name their children and their colonies with primarily Greek names (Athena, Apollo, Gaelen, Kara Thrace (a region in Greece), Agathon, etc.). They worship a pantheon of deities as the Greeks did and yet, like the Ancient Greeks, many doubt their existence as well. They have rituals. They have temples. They have scriptures. They have priests and priestesses. They have codes of morality. They have a eschatology (theology of end-times). They have sects (One of the colonies ascribes to a religion that opposes the use of modern medicine). Orson Scott Card, in his Alvin Maker series imagines a world where Native American religion was essentially an accurate description of how the world works and plays out the possibility of an American history in which THAT world view prevailed. In a way, Battlestar Gallactica, at least so far, is doing something similar with the ancient Greeks. What would it look like if the future was not a continuation of who WE are now but was a continuation of who we were at one point in time? It is an interesting way to consider the study of an ancient culture. What would it look like if no one had interrupted its technological evolution? Stargate does this somewhat with Egyptian culture.

Battlestar Galactica might also make an interesting way to study the various “isms” of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. One could feasibly do an interesting study of Marxism, examining how the Cylons were created to work for the humans, how they rebelled, how the Cylons themselves set up a class system that mirrored the one they rebelled against with different models of Cylons being allowed different measures of political power, social status, and occupational latitude. A whole episode of BSG is devoted to the economic stratification of human society and how Capricans are priviledged while Sagitarians are exploited.

One could easily cover the various tenets of existentialism (Sartre, Camus, Focault, and even Simone De Beauvoir) and their central question of identity. Can a Cylon chose to be a human? Is morality a matter of simply being consistent with the choices one makes about how they will live? Were we “born for a purpose? A destiny? Or is it up to us to make our own story. One could examine the idea of imperialism, looking at the way that the occupied human community on New Caprica reacts to being colonized in ways similar to the way Frantz Fanon predicts they would (and should) in his book The Wretched of the Earth. It would be interesting to look at how imperialism has been justified and opposed throughout human history.

Another interesting “ism” that might be worth addressing through the lens of Battlestar Galactica would be feminism. The culture of Battlestar Galactica does not seem to roil with conflict over gender. Perhaps because the culture seems to be gender blind on the surface, the argument is being made that IF we would just not make an issue of gender, gender would not be an issue. The President of the colonies is a woman (Laura Roslin). The best fighter pilot in the fleet is a woman (Kara Thrace). The admiral of the fleet (for a while) is a woman (Admiral Cain). The first Cylon to open the way to new ways of thinking about humans is a woman (Athena). The high priest of Laura Roslin’s religion is a woman (A Black woman at that). Clearly, being a woman does not preclude one from receiving the rewards of meritorious service. But there are still interesting issues of feminist theory to be discussed here. Kara Thrace may be a feminist role model of sorts but there is a sense that she expresses it by being “better than the boys at what boys do.” Is this feminism? We have Laura Roslin as president and we can see that she tends to make decisions by means of an intuitive process that she cannot always explain logically to her male subordinates. All she can say is “you are going to have to trust me on this, Bill.” Is this what feminist leadership should look like? The principle Cylon character in the program (Number Six) also raises questions about the nature of feminism. “Six” exerts a great deal of manipulative influence over Gaius Balthar and she is not afraid to use all of her “feminine wiles” on him in doing so. Every episode it seems, she wears a different red dress and combines it in deadly combination with a breathy voice and body language. One is forced to ask, if a woman can use these “tools” of influence effectively, should she be denied the right to do so by feminists of the Kara Thrace variety. Is there a rule that says woman should not be allowed to actualize themselves by means of tactics that are …. Well … for lack of a better term, feminine? Certain episodes also deal with difficult issues of rape, abortion, pregnancy, homosexuality, child-care, and even sexual harassment.

And then there is the matter of religion. One could find numerous avenues for conversation here. At Gaius Balthar’s trial, the intent to link Gaius to Jesus could not be more obvious. He even looks like the famous portraits of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemene, bathed in light. Captain Adama overtly rejects the notion that for him, it could be acceptable to place all the blame and shame for human sin on one man and “send him out the air lock”. In a way, this is a direct rejection of the Christian notion of substitutionary atonement or the Jewish right of the “scape goat” or “Passover lamb”.  But Gaius is a malleable religious figure in the hands of the directors.  As he starts his cult of monotheism and challenges the orthodoxy of polytheism, he might also be regarded as a straw man stunt double for Muhammad. Like Muhammad, he has visions. Like Muhammad, he was banished from the community and came back. Like Muhammad, his “partner” is the first to believe his message and indeed, to insist that he go out and testify. Like Muhammad, he is not opposed to the idea of “multiple wives”. Or, if you want, you could easily compare him to Joseph Smith as he starts the church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints. Much of the terminology of Battlestar Galactica is borrowed from the Mormon Church and scripture (Kobol/Kolob, the Quarum of Twelve, the notion that humans can be gods someday, etc.)

Along these same lines there is the whole question of life after death that is raised by Cylon “resurrection”. Cylons who die, are simply downloaded (reincarnated) into duplicate bodies where they take the lessons of previous lives into new lives (allowing Kara Thrace to murder her Cylon “husband” Leoben at least five times). This is just a beginning of the possibilities. Discussions about the political use and manipulation of religion, the separation of church and state, the practice of forceful and non-forceful conversion, miracles, the power of prayer, the psychology of cults, the relationship between religion and morality, the issue of fate, free will, and prophecy, and many other issues of religious concern are there for the picking.

I would be remiss not to mention the possibilities for discussion in the field of psychology that present themselves. Clearly, Gaius Balthar in particular would be a field day of possibilities. Is he schizophrenic? How does his intelligence impact his social and emotional IQ? Does he have a learning disability? Is is sociopath? How does he use and employ psychological defense mechanisms in dealing with his guilt? One can imagine how one would try to approach Balthar in therapy. One of the most fascinating themes relating to human psychology that the series deals with is the process by which a person (or a Cylon) comes to understand their “shadow self”. Five humans are, unbeknownst to them at the beginning, actually sleeper Cylons. What does it feel like to begin to gain consciousness about their true identity? How do they each go about integrating their new self concept into their old personality structure? How do they resist the truth and how do they pay when they do? How does their “enlightenment” play out in the relationships they formed before they were conscious of who they were. Is the process they go through similar to the way that many gay people may discover that they are not who they thought they were? I think parallels are hard to miss.

In a similar vein, how about the possibilities for an examination of group psychology, mass psychology, and family system psychology. There is the complex relationship between Admiral Adama and his son to consider (Lee most certainly goes through an individuation process during the later episodes). There is the relationship between Kara Thrace and her mother that always resides in the background of her “acting out”. There is the domestic violence of Chief Tyrel and Caley or Saul Tigh and his wife, Helen or Tigh’s achoholism, or Kat’s drug addiction, or Gina (Six’s) Post-Traumatic stress after the abuse on the Pegasus. Many of the characters have to deal with grief for their various traumas, both personal and shared. Its hard to know where to stop.

It might also be interesting to talk about textual criticism and oral tradition. One can learn a lot about how stories are modified and adapted over time by comparing the original Battlestar Galactica series and the latest version. The ways in which the story is crafted says a great deal about the nature of political debates at the time of creation. The original Battlestar Galactica was a warning against putting too much faith in diplomacy and arms agreements. In that version, the Cylon's attack precicely when the humans have let their guard down. The war STARTS because the humans are being naive in spite of Admiral Adama's  warnings that only strength will bring peace (in other words, the original Battlestar Galactica was pro-Reagan). In contrast, the new BSG is pretty obviously anti-Bush. In th enew version, the war starts because Adama was in a pre-emptive mode and stepped over the line hoping to pre-empt an attack. It would be interesting to look at the history of stories and to look at how old stories are redacted to new purposes.

Lastly, I will just highlight some of the obvious connections that could be made in a study of Contemporary World Issues. Clearly, there are connection intentionally being made by the producers and clearly, they intend for their show to raise questions about the modern world. One could discuss the Patriot Act, terrorism, the Iraq War, election fraud, the death penalty, abortion, stem cell research (Who is a human?), resource depletion, population control, democracy, racism, poverty, torture, environmentalism, global warming, or any number of other issues we read about in the papers.

I think it would be easy to construct a curriculum for a course like this. But who would take it?

Question for Comment: If you were going to take a course that used a popular TV show as its main theme, what television show would you select for that course? Why?

The boys and I have been watching the Battlestar Galactica television series the last few weeks and today we got to the end of season three. I will not throw out any spoilers here but in general, four of the last five unknown Cylons are revealed in this episode and as season four gets underway, the mystery of who that last mystery Cylon is heats up. The PR on season four has a picture of the principle characters lined up at a table in such a way as to recreate the scene of the last supper as painted by Leonardo DaVinci. It captures the moment when Jesus says to his disciples “One of you will betray me” and they all react in different ways, some accusatory, others with expressions of self doubt. As if to say, “Is it me? Am I the Cylon?”

In the television series, many people begin to suspect themselves and it is as they begin to suspect that THEY might be the hated Cylon, that they begin to wonder if Cylons should be judged after all. If they are so like me that I think I might be one, can they be all that evil and unredeemable?

People do interesting things with Da Vinci’s last supper to get all sorts of secret meanings out of the painting and many a computer graphics geek is doing the same with the Battle Star Galactica last supper scene, trying to identify "Judas".

The series deals with numerous contemporary issues in its various episodes and the allusions to religious, and specifically Christian themes is palpable. Gaius Balthar looks like Jesus in front of Pilate as he is being tried. Lee Adama insists that people are placing all their guilt and shame on him, seeking to exercise their own consciences by crucifying Bathar (well, flushing him out an airlock). Balthar often strikes poses that would give on the clear impression that he is a messianic figure. (Early in the series, he is seen on his porch in a vision with his arms outstretched like a crucifix contemplating whether he might be God. Later in season four, he is thought to be a doer of miracles.

Ironically, the first Battlestar Galactica was created by a Mormon who did not mind including many terms and concepts from the theology of Joseph Smith and the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints in his storyline. The “quorum of twelve” comes right out of Mormon governmental policy. The sealing of marriages, the notion that humans can become gods someday, and the whole notion of a "wagon train" of ships looking for a home where they will not be persecuted is straight out of the Mormon storybook. As the twelve colonies of Kobol (a loose respelling of the Mormon term "Kolob") try to settle down in "New Caprica" but are "evicted" one can see the story of the Mormons at Navoo, Illinois.

But BSG is not just about religion. Its loaded with philosophy too. The ideas of Satre and Focault and other existentialists who insisted that human beings do not come “pre-loaded” with identity but MAKE their identity is central to the question that characters in BSG confront. “Existence precedes essence” the existentialists said. That is, we do not have an essence when we are born that we must find and express. Rather, we are the result of choices we make about who we wish to be.

When characters in the series begin to suspect that they are Cylons (machines designed to look like humans and for a time think they are humans) it causes them tremendous psychic discomfort. The more they had devalued Cylons before the discovery (calling them “toasters", killing them, torturing them, waging war against them, etc.) the more discomfort they feel at finding out that they ARE what they had despised. When the character Sharon Valeri is confronted with her “Cylon self” she denies it, represses it, refuses to admit it, and moments later, her programming takes over and she shoots her own commander. When others later are confronted with their fundamental nature, they admit it … but then decide to continue acting and being who they have been. They do not chose to repress, but rather to admit and chose differently. And for that reason, their programming fails to express itself.

Can we simply chose to be anything we want? Whether that is what we have thought we were? Or what we would like to be? Are we blank slates to write on as we will? Do we belong to the communities we are born into or may we chose communities that we believe come closer to the values we hold dear? Is the community created by a group of selves? Or is the self created by the community that raises it? These and many other issues lie embedded in the story lines of BSG.

In the last scenes of the the Season three finale, all the Cylons in the process of being revealed to themselves begin to hear the same song. Its Bob Dylan’s Along the Watchtower.

All Along The Watchtower

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

Copyright ©1968; renewed 1996 Dwarf Music

It is a song about two dissenters (a joker and a thief – the entertainer and the criminal – both of whom have a long history of challenging society’s entrenched values) approach a guarded wall. On the wall are “princes” powerful wealthy people who watch and guard their subjects, women and the bare footed poor below. The joker and the thief approach, as if on the cusp of a hurricane to bring their system of values down. The jester complains that his work is not valued as it out to be but is only “sold” for profit by the business interests that “own him. The thief reminds him that this state of things is only temporary. Change - its a commin - blowin in the wind you might say.

 

I could not help but draw links to Beethoven’s Eroica for that too speaks of an approaching hero on horseback, riding howling storm winds to challenge an exploitive and oppressive system. It is interesting how much in common Dylan and Beethoven and the creators of a Science fiction television series may have in common.

Ever felt different? Ever felt like the balloon in a tack factory? Like you really didn't belong? Ever wonder how someone with internal strength would set their internal thermostat so that it did not matter? The following comes from Zora Neale Hurston's How it Feels to be Colored Me (1928) kindly pointed out to me by my friend Denise. As it relates to the Toni Morrison work I have been doing and particularly to what she has to say about her work and its connection to music, I will include just the following excerpt.

"I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.

For instance at Barnard. "Beside the waters of the Hudson" I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again.

Sometimes it is the other way around. A white person is set down in our midst, but the contrast is just as sharp for me. For instance, when I sit in the drafty basement that is The New World Cabaret with a white person, my color comes. We enter chatting about any little nothing that we have in common and are seated by the jazz waiters. In the abrupt way that jazz orchestras have, this one plunges into a number. It loses no time in circumlocutions, but gets right down to business. It constricts the thorax and splits the heart with its tempo and narcotic harmonies. This orchestra grows rambunctious, rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with primitive fury, rending it, clawing it until it breaks through to the jungle beyond. I follow those heathen--follow them exultingly. I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue. My pulse is throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something--give pain, give death to what, I do not know. But the piece ends. The men of the orchestra wipe their lips and rest their fingers. I creep back slowly to the veneer we call civilization with the last tone and find the white friend sitting motionless in his seat, smoking calmly.

"Good music they have here," he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips.

Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.

http://grammar.about.com/od/60essays/a/theireyesessay.htm

Hurston insists, back in 1928, that she refuses to dwell on the trauma of slavery (Morrison doesn't think American society is done yet and gives us Beloved). Huston writes:

"But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more of less. No, I do not weep at the world--I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said "On the line!" The Reconstruction said "Get set!" and the generation before said "Go!" I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep. Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and the choice was not with me. It is a bully adventure and worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it. No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory."

Many would probably call her an "Uncle Tom" for seemingly aiding and abetting white people in their wish to just forget what they did and pretend that African Americans struggle, not because of what was done to them, but because of who they are. I tend to think that Toni Morrison would share some of these perspectives. She likes to compare her literary work to music. In a tranitional blues song, the singer starts out grieving for some offence, some hard luck. But then he or she gets up and gets on a train and moves on. they move on. Both are important to blues music.

Question for Comment: What wounds, hardships, bad luck, or offense is making it difficult for you to move on?

It is hard to know where to begin a book review of The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable Edited by Marc C. Connor particularly without knowing what you, the reader, might be interested in. The following are simply some of my gleanings from the book.

1.       Morrison’s work has drawn from Western literary roots but it is primarily to be seen as an African American challenge to many of the principle ideas revered in Western Euro-American aesthetics.

“An understanding of Morrison's work requires immersion in ‘ways of knowing,’ to borrow Nellie McKay's phrase, that are not necessarily a part of the Western tradition: African and African American myth and language, African American musical traditions of the spirituals, blues, and jazz, alternative approaches to history, religion, ancestry, culture specific concepts and philosophical ideas of time and cosmology that are often opposed to traditional Western concepts, and many more.” P. xi

The editor insists that one must take both African American and European-American traditions into consideration though Morrison herself prefers to lean more heavily on the later:

“The double voicedness of the African-American text consequently requires that African-American writing be approached in a similarly double manner, one that is cognizant both of the specifically African features of the writing, but also the Western, or Anglo European, features of that writing.  Only such a double vision is capable of perceiving and interpreting, the manner in which the text moves between the two traditions.” P. xix

Some of the key elements of the way she sees things can be highlighted in the quote below:

“Though Morrison resists clarifying what precisely [her] principles are, her increasingly voluminous critical writings reveal four main elements that seem to constitute the essence of black writing for her: the presence of displacement or alienation; a close relationship between author and reader; an oral quality to the voice of the text; and at the formal level, a quality of music in the writing that is distinctively black.  When these elements come together in the work of art, they produce Morrison's own aesthetic ideal.” P. xxii

2.       Toni Morrison, from what I gather wants her novels to sound like Black people talking … better yet, singing … or maybe even better yet, worshiping. She tries to capture the ways that people formed and solidified communities with words. On this topic, I quote the book extensively:

“Toni Morrison claims that ‘writing is a craft that appears solitary but needs another for its completion”. This reader response element that pervades Morrison's writing responds to its omnipresent alienation. “One of the major characteristics of black literature,” she asserts, “is the participation of the other, that is the audience, the reader.”  To Morrison, this is not only the hallmark of her writing, but the very function of literature: “My writing expects, demands participatory reading, and that I think that is what literature is supposed to do.  It's not just about retelling the story; it's about involving the reader” P. xxiii

 “For Morrison, this means restoring the oral quality of the language, and making it imitate as closely as possible “the one other art form in which black people have always excelled, that is music.” P. xxiv

“Reaffirmation of community is one of the hallmarks of Black English.  Systems of language within the Black English oral tradition are systems that call for the participants to reaffirm their cultural roots, community, and themselves.  One of those systems is call/response, defined by Smitherman as “stating and counter stating; acting and reacting.” It is “spontaneous verbal and nonverbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the speaker statements (calls) are punctuated by expressions (responses) from the listener.” . . . “response allows the caller to know that the audience approves of what she is saying and how she is saying it; it is immediate validation.” P. 22

“Morrison allows the reader to become part of the circle of storytelling and thereby witnesses.  In African-American culture witness/testify, like Signifin and call/response, uses the act of communication as a metaphor for the unity expressed in the traditional African worldview.  The act of witness/testify is the tangible proof that symbolizes or serves as evidence to validate one's existence as part of the group.  In the oral tradition of Black English, witness and testify go hand-in-hand: one who witnesses has an obligation to testify.  To witness is to affirm, attest, certify, validate, and observed.  Thus Smitherman defines testifying as a ‘concept referring to a ritualized form of black communication in which the speaker gives verbal witness to the efficacy, truth, and power of some experience in which all Blacks have shared.’” P.23

Thus, in many ways, her work takes us back both to the West Coast of Africa and to the Socratic dialogs of Attica.

3.       One of the central themes of Morrison’s work is community:

“The great truism of Morrison scholarship is that her primary theme is community.  Certainly each novel rigorously engages such issues as what constitutes a community, what functions communities serve, what threatens the community, what help skits survive.  As Morrison herself has said, if anything she does, in the way of writing novels, isn't about the village or the community or about you, then it is not about anything.” P. 49

There is a particularly engaging segment on page 54 about how Pecola keeps getting thrown out of her homes. Like Jesus in a way, there is no room in the inn. One home after another rejects her because one home after another judges her by standards of beauty that they have been given rather than standards that they have chosen. When Claudia concludes that the soil had decided to reject marigolds that year, she is not criticizing marigolds but criticizing society. Though marigolds may blame themselves for dieing, the fault lies in the culture that fails to nourish them.

“Pecola is destroyed within her very community, and that community not only fails to aid her, they have helped cause her isolation.” P. 55

“The Bluest Eye concludes with Claudia's final meditation on Pocola’s state, in which she views the shattering of Pocola as part of an entire economy of sterility and death, which embraces as well the community and even the land itself: “It was the fault of the earth -- the land -- our town.  I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year.  The soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers.  Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruits it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.” P56

4.       My favorite chapter in the book is about the aesthetic that Toni Morrison wishes to see replace the one that destroys Pecola Breedlove. It is an aesthetic that says that any human being will become beautiful while we pay loving attention to it and use our imaginations to understand why it is worthy of the tangible love we bestow on it.

Toni Morrison's Beauty Formula Katherine Stern

“The concept of physical beauty as a virtue,” Morrison wrote in 1974 “is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructiveideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it.”  Morrison was responding to the slogan ‘Black is Beautiful’ - what she took to be ‘a white idea turned inside-out’ that still reduced the worth of people to their bodily appearance.  Concentrating on whether we are beautiful,” she wrote, “is a way of measuring worth that is wholly trivial and wholly white and preoccupation with it is an irrevocable slavery of the senses.  “However much beauty matters to white people” she added, “it never stopped them from annihilating anybody.”

Morrison's impatience with the very idea of physical beauty will be familiar to readers of The Bluest Eye, where the narrator calls beauty “one of the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought” and tells how Pauline Breedlove was never able, after her education in the movies, “to look at a face and not assign it's a category in the scale of absolute beauty.”  In a piece for the New York Times Magazine in 1971, Morrison wrote that it must be just as well for black women to “remain useful” rather than to strive for a more decorative status.  The romanticism of beauty worship seemed to her “a needless cul-de-sac, an opiate that eventually must separate us from reality.” P. 77

“Critics have been fascinated by Morrison's treatment of the destructive, devaluing power of white standards of beauty but few have tried to describe the alternative approach to beauty that she offers. . . .
“In this essay, I show how Morrison draws our attention away from the visual, the static, the remote, or idealized object, towards an experience of physical beauty that is tangible and improvisational, relational and contextual, involving mutual efforts to feel as well as see.  Morrison does not merely circumvent Western aesthetic standards, but invents entirely original ways to approach the beautiful as work or process.  In her narratives, beauty depends on the beholder's craft or intention and results from labor upon the body either by the hands or the imagination.” P. 78

“Morrison's emphasis on the tactile over the visual conveys an implicit challenge to the Western aesthetic fascination with sight and corresponding degradation of touch.  Aristotle considered touch the most lowly, animalistic sensation and Renaissance theorists echoed him. To Vincenzio Borghini touch seemed ‘bestial’ compared to sight, the most crude and most material of the senses.  Leon Battista Alberti chose as his emblem a winged eye, explaining that ‘the eye was an obvious symbol of super mystique, more powerful than anything, swifter, more worthy... it is such as to be the first, chief, king, like the God of human parts.” Leonardo da Vinci, in his Treatise on Painting, declares that ‘the eye counsels and corrects all the human arts and its sciences are most certain.’”

“In general, the discourse on aesthetics has endowed the visual faculty with objectivity, autonomy, and hence, dominion.  Because visual sensation covers remote distances, its reach is considered lordly and authoritative, whereas tactile sensation, limited to the local in specific, seems lowly by comparison.” P. 83

“Beauty takes place in Morrison's novels when some active imagination makes the body’s unforeseen beauty suddenly apparent.  Thus for Morrison, the experience of beauty is much more subjective and dynamic than its visual, static dimension would suggest.  Beauty is ultimately provides a subtle, and unaccountable, unpredictable response.  And beauty is narrational, for Morrison is uninterested in any notion of beauty unmediated by fantasy, storyline, the contingencies of context. . . . For Kant, the beauty of an object must be distinct from the fictions that it inspires, whereas for Morrison, the aesthetic object cannot be disassociated from the montage of perceptions whereby it comes to be both felt and imagined.”

“By reminding us of the contributions of imagination to the appreciation of the body, Morrison suggests that responsiveness creates the experience of beauty, rather than the usual notion that physical beauty preexist it elicits a response.” P. 88

“With an awareness of how Morrison tends to devise interactions between physical touch and imagination, and how she stages beauty as a surprise effect of mental imagery brought to bear on handiwork, we can reread the narrator's strange self disclosure at the end of Jazz and understand exactly how and why the book takes a body, conveying its experience of the hands cupped around it: ‘I love the way you hold me, how close you let me be to you.  I like your fingers on and on, lifting, turning. I have watched your face for a long time now and missed your eyes when you went away from me... look where your hands are.  Now” … Surpassingly gorgeous, the ending of Jazz is a perfect example of the beauty of imagined touch, Morrison's aesthetic trademark.” P. 91

I confess that I am often amazed at how much scholars have to say to say anything but by the same token, I am impressed by how much I learn from them when I take the time.

Question for Conversation: What do you think about this notion that beauty "occurs" to the person willing to love others with touch and imagination? How does one go about changing people's ideas about beauty in a world so permeated with visual tools for contact?

Beethoven’s Eroica (3rd Symphony) was apparently written to celebrate the heroism of Napoleon Bonapart who Beethoven admired as someone who understood that talent and ability should count more than status and title in society. The movie, Eroica is a brilliant portrayal of the first rehearsal of the symphony and captures the essence of the impact it had on different people who were for and against the sort of philosophy of romantic individuality, passion, personal charisma and freedom of expression that Eroica celebrates. Between the second and third movements, Beethoven is portrayed having an intimate conversation with Josephine Von Brunswick who Beethoven would dearly like to marry but who, because of his status in society, is unable to reciprocate. He is not nobility. She is. The laws of Austria would essentially deprive her of custodial rights of her children if she marries anyone “outside the club”. It is clear to see why Beethoven so admires and celebrates the ideals of the French Revolution and Napoleon in particular. Both he and Napoleon are living evidence that nobility has no monopoly on ability and Beethoven is obviously furious about the system of privilege and exclusion that he lives under. Under its rules of genetic apartheid, he cannot actualize himself. And he is, quite justifiably pissed about it.

Like Pecola Breedlove in Bluest Eye, he is denied the love and affirmation he craves because he was born of parents without requisite title to such affirmation. What he wants is denied him despite his abilities because of an accident of birth that he cannot change. And I suspect you can hear him taking out his anger in Eroica. Against such a system, the heroic figure struggles in the first movement. My own theory is that the second movement is the funeral of the aristocratic system. It is to be mourned but … only for a movement. For both Austria and Beethoven, the world can be reborn and few pieces of music will make one more joyful than the fourth movement in which that new life is reborn and lived out “happily ever after.”

Beethoven, I think benefits from the system as it is and thus he will grieve its loss but I suspect that he believes that in a new world, where the privileged are not privileged because of some accident of birth, he will do even better. Ride on Napoleon, ride.

It is only when he discovers that his hero has just made himself an emperor, a hereditary monarch, that Beethoven’s fury boils over. The bastard is betraying him and he knows it. He is replacing one form of exploitive order with another. And here Beethoven had already held the funeral for the old system in the second movement of a work dedicated to the wretch! Had Napoleon been present, the pen Beethoven stuck through the title page would have buried itself right into Napoleon’s eyeball.

There is a great exchange early on in the movie before the symphony starts in which some Baron is being introduced to Beethoven and mistaking Beethoven for an aristocrat of some kind, asks him for more details about his status:

“What rank? A land owner?”

“A land owner. Do I look like a land owner?” answers Beethoven, “No. I am a brain owner.”

Like Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel, the Eroica is going to stick it right to him point blank, “my passion combined with my talent is going to beat the hell out of your uniform , red sash, and title, Her Von puffypants.” I can just imagine him saying. "Sit over there on your throne and weep because when I am through wiping this floor with you, no one is going to remember you or your &*#$@  “titles”.

I love it.

Question for Comment: Does the system that you work in reward merit or simply longevity? Have you ever felt like you had more talent, passion, and energy than the system in which you worked was willing to reward you for? How do you go about protesting when that happens?