Interview questions by Alicia

Alicia has asked the following questions as part of the St. Blog's interview:

1) Your blog refers to food, art, music, bullfighting, and politics. How do these connect to Catholic Theology?

As I believe you or Kathy the Carmelite pointed out, our Catholic Faith is an incarnational one. "And the Word became Flesh." Of course the Incarnation was the key to understanding what God has already revealed, from Genesis on: "He looked over His creation and called it good." Our Roman calendar is organized in terms of feasts and fasts. We commemorate our great saints and even martyrs by celebratory feasting. Our liturgy is centered around the great sacrament of the Eucharist, which has got to be one of the most sensual, amazing realities of our faith, second only to the Creation ex nihil of the universe itself.

However, we must temper our love of Creation, expressed in the love of food, with the virtues of prudence and charity. We must avoid gluttony, and I see the sin of gluttony in how the average American eats: excessive processed food eaten on the go, or alone, outside of the context of the family meal or parish feast. Even the reliance on processed food is a form of gluttony: the stuff only exists so that the maximum profit may be squeezed out of the market. Quality suffers, the intricate relationship between man and fellow man, between man and God's creation are all ruined by the likes of modified food starch, hot house tomatoes, soil sterilization and the like. Factory farming is dependent upon poor stewardship, appalingly cheap labor, and an emphasis on quantity over quality.

Good food, centered around the family meal, along with a place at the table for needy friend and foe alike, made with love and care and constantly in mind of the splendor of God's creation, is the cure for the fast food culture. One of my favorite Italian traditions is the feast of St. Joseph. Here we get to suspend our Lenten fast, to prepare a sumptuous banquet in honor of the husband of the Blessed Mother of God, the step-father of Christ himself. We make fruit fritters, and fill a home altar with food, which is blessed by a priest. After our friends and family have eaten, we take the food on the altar and give it to the poor. What a tradition!

Along with good food, we must have art. Art is one of the few things, along with prayer (and combined in liturgy), that "stops time" for us. It draws us into a world of contemplation of beauty, initiates an internal dialog that allows us to experience beauty both intellectually and emotionally. When we really look at a good painting, whether it is realistic, impressionalistic, expressionistic, or abstract, we are able to get a glimpse of the world that was not previously known to us.

I like art of just about every era and place. Whether in the geometric tilework of the near East or the subtle fresco work of Piero della Francesca, or the calm abstraction of a Richard Diebenkorn, or the heated emotion of a German Expressionist, we can, if we are properly disposed and can look deeply, see the work of man in the image of God. Even in the work of a notorious sinner like Picasso is the basic goodness of humanity evident.

Of all the arts, my favorite is painting, followed by music. In certain arts, like opera or dance, the visual is combined with the musical (and often the narrative) to create an experience that really takes us out of our daily worries. Of all of these synthetic arts, the bullfight is one of the most glorious. To Northerners who do not understand the art, bullfighting is a cruel sport. It is no more of a sport than ballet. One cannot bet on bullfighting. The outcome is as much a constant as the outcome of Hamlet.

As to the cruelty, the bull is an animal with little ability to contemplate. It enters the ring in full fury, and receives his wounds in hot blood. I have received wounds in hot blood, and the pain is minimal. When enough time has elapsed for the bull to really feel the pain, it is dead. The bull is in the ring for about twenty minutes, and dies at the end.

Meanwhile the bull, in concert with a talented torero, provides the viewer with an art that is breathtaking. We see clearly the interaction of the wild with the civilized, with the human and the beast, the rural with the urban. In those moments of supreme art (a series of linked naturales, with the bull slowly spinning around the matador, slowing and starting at the matador's command), there is complete union between the two. Nowhere else does an animal get a chance to participate as gloriously in the unique human undertaking of art as the bull does in the bullfight.

If we view the Eucharist as the moment when the human and the divine mingle, we can see the bullfight as the next rung down on the ladder, where the human and the natural mingle as they do nowhere else. In this act, we can gain an amazing understanding of our Divinely ordained place in the universe, and time stops while we are participating as spectators.

Politics, alas, is the least of human affairs. I am more and more convinced that to solve the problems of our society, we must bring about cultural change, rather than engage in the arena of politics. However, we are commanded to love our neighbor, and to do this we must take keen interest in the affairs of the polis. Because we are of a fallen nature, this means coming up with solutions to the effects of sin. So we have the dreary art of politics.

Thankfully, we are not left alone in these matters. We have, first and foremost the Gospels. Then we have the Sacred Tradition, especially as manifested in the great social encyclicals. I am convinced that we need a Syndicalist state, with liberal borrowings from Franco, as well as careful readings of the Rule of St. Benedict, the Rule of St. Francis, the encyclicals, the Dominican constitutions, the Distributists (although they should be seen as outlining a goal more than a practical economic theory to obtaining that goal), as well as the writings of learned men outside the Faith, classical and modern.

I find myself more admiring of Francisco Franco than ever, but realize that he did not create a perfect system, just as I realize that the Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley is a step in the right direction, even though its members may have some goofy ideas as well. I have been called a right-wing hippy, and perhaps I am, but I will always favor the small and the local over the megachains.

While believing strongly in subsidiarity, I am extremely wary of democracy, especially as it is practiced nowadays in the West.

2) I understand that you are a graduate of the University of California's Santa Cruz campus. This campus is not exactly known as a bastion of conservative thought. How did your values system and the university work together during your years there?

I started out as an athiest libertarian and ended up as a Catholic Franquisto. I was somehow elected as chairman of the student senate, and was, I think, the only chairman to have a portrait of Franco and a portrait of the Pope over my desk. I found the exchange of ideas, the atmosphere of debate, the constant challenging of each other to be wonderful. There was the aspect of political correctness, no stronger nor weeker at UCSC than any other modern University, but I found that it primarily hindered the coward. One of the reasons I stopped writing for the conservative newspaper was that I found that every case of someone "persecuted" for thought crimes was basically a jerk and a whiner. Sure, people challenged my ideas, and I grew from that, but I challenged theirs as well. I was always able to find a circle of intelligent, thoughtful people to drink coffee with and debate until the wee hours. These folks were from all parts of the political spectrum.

I have found that so-called conservative colleges are as much into group-think and self-validation as any Womens' Studies department. I decided that I would not consider a school that offered a business major. I do not think that the UCSC general ed requirements guarantee an education. One had to find one's own way, but if one wanted a good education, one could find it.

3) You seem to be a talented cook as well as musician. Do you see a connection between the culinary and musical arts?

All of the arts basically use the mechanics peculiar to themselves to strive for the same basic ideals of diversity in unity. Cooking and music share timing, texture, counterpoint, balance, craftsmanship and the need to reach the audience through the senses. When art neglects these crucial goals, it ends up as that horrible hybrid known as conceptual art, which is either bad literature dressed as art, or bad art under the cloak of literature.

4) What prompted you to become a virtuoso in the kitchen?

The Bucchione family has taken food seriously for generations. Being stubborn and competitive made me want to do things just a little bit better than the rest. Sharp, quick slaps upside the head from my 4'11" nonna, kept me true to the great traditions of Tuscan cooking. Driving through the South made me keenly appreciative of regional distinctions and made me want to find a genuinely Californian voice in the kitchen. Then I read Paul Bertolli, Alice Waters, MFK Fisher, and the rest.

When I started to take my Catholic Faith seriously, the elements of food outlined in my answer to the fist question motivated me even further.

5) Who would you personally like to see as the next Pope?

An Italian or at least a Latin. It is good to have some transalpine blood in the Vatican once in awhile, but I hope it is not a general trend. I do not worry about specifics, as that is the job of the Holy Spirit. In some ways I think it would be great to have a Rembert Weakland or Roger Mahoney as Pope, because what a wonderful example of the charism of the office of Peter it would be to see one of these men solemnly embrace orthodoxy, as they would be guaranteed by Christ Himself to do.

Barring all that, I think the Panzer Cardinal Ratzinger would be good, as would Arinze.

Super busy...

Today is my last day at Arhoolie, so between having to explain my procedures to the crew, and being kidnapped at lunch and then tonight I am hosting a dinner party for Amália's godfather's birthday, I probably will not be blogging much until the weekend. Then we will be in Redding for a few days, so I am not sure I will get much done there, but I will post when I get brief chances, or just need a little break (like now).

Teachout's at it again, so here we go...

You can read the rules on the posting below.

CLASSICAL CD: Sophie Yates, Scarlatti in Iberia

POP SONG: Aretha Franklin, Respect

PAINTING: Richard Diebenkorn, Girl Sitting

FILM: Pane e Tulipane

BOOK: The Little World of Don Camillo, Guaraschi

Shameless Commercial Plug

Speaking of things Arhoolie, if you need to beef up your Blues or Gospel Collections, now is the time to order online at the Arhoolie Blues and Gospel on line sale. These are great prices. I can give you specific recommendations as well, if you need any extra information.

Office artifacts

I don't know how it is in other offices, but here at Arhoolie, each of my predecessors has left behind a section of files of supposedly useful stuff that never gets touched by subsequent folks. As I am tidying up my office, and notating things so that the crew here can do what needs to be done when I am gone next week, I find myself chuckling over stuff that I am discovering: stuff that should have been tossed out years before I even got here, but no one knew if the hidden secret to selling records was to be found there, so it was duly saved in a box. As much as I like to think that I am leaving something that can easily be taken over, I am realistic. What seems perfectly logical to me may make not a shred of sense to the rest of the world, and I can explain it until I am blue in the face, and they still will not see. Undoubtedly some of the artifacts of the Keilholtz years will be here as long as Arhoolie is around, which should be for a very long time. I suppose one could construct a case study in the eccentrics known as record publicists just looking at the remnants of our various tenures here.

It all makes me wonder what the weight of utterly useless paper is in the average office. How much stuff gets kept for mysterious reasons? If we ever have paperless offices, what will they have done with it all? I think we would clog the recycling centers and the landfills as well if it were all dumped on them at once.

I am doing what I can to eliminate the useless detritus of three publicity directors, but I am probably being overly-cautious as well. I imagine in a few years, someone around here will wonder, "why do we still have this? Hmmm. I don't have time to go through it, so I will just keep it here." Even in the computer database I am reluctant to actually delete people. "But what if they show up at another publication in a few years? We should have a history!"

OK, Keilholtz, but explain why you have a code for dead people? Will they be writing reviews after the Resurrection? Well, no, but if a journalist is doing a story on a writer and asks us for stuff, it is the easiest way to find information. And how many times has that happened? Just leave me alone. I like my system.

Sage

Sage is an interesting herb. I think of it as a dry aroma, with a resinous quality, as opposed to smells like cinnamon that have a sweetness to their smell. I know that I am mixing up the language of taste sensations with smell sensations, but I think we can chart smells on a graph with sweet (or floral/fruity) on one end and dry (resinous) on the other. Then on the Y axis, perhaps we can chart minerally and organic. This is an embryonic system, and one with many errors, but it will due for now. A system of olfactory classification needs to be developed, and it needs to be independent of too much reference to concrete smells.

Sage tends towards the dry. If a dish I were cooking had too much sage, I would temper it with a sweet spice, like cinnamon. Sage is a naturally friend of pork, and I can only imagine what the flesh of sage-fed pigs would taste like.

A simple pork dish is to tuck sage and garlic cloves into a pork roast (round is fine, but loin is especially nice), and rub the roast with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper. Brown the roast in hot butter, and add a half cup of white vermouth and a splash of balsamic vinegar and a few more sage leaves. Cover the pan and cook the pork over low heat. When it is cooked, remove the pork and cover with foil, and reduce the pan juices to a good syrup. Strain and whisk in a few tablespoons of softened butter. Salt and pepper to taste and serve over the sliced pork. The leftover sage sauce can go in polpette di lesso.

I generally serve this with roasted potatoes and short braised lacinato kale.

Polpette di lesso

I have the vague feeling that I posted this recipe before, but it is one of my all-time favorites. It tastes good, and it is a way of using up leftovers (other than reheating them for the third night).

These meatballs can be made with just about any leftover cooked meat: boiled beef, roast beef, pork, hamburger, even chicken, but I would only use so much. You can even mix the meats, provided the seasonings don't conflict. What you do is roughly chop up your meat and mix it in a bowl with some mashed up boiled potato (or crustless Tuscan country bread soaked in milk and squeezed), a couple of eggs, chopped SAGE, chopped parsley, chopped lemon zest, grated Reggiano Parmeggiana cheese, sea salt, freshly cracked pepper and nutmeg. If you have any leftover buerre rouge, or sage sauce, add it. If it seems like it is not going to hold together, add more egg. If it looks like it is approaching omelettehood, add other ingredients. Roll balls of the mixture in bread crumbs and fry in extra virgin olive oil. All you need, then is a green salad or ensalta caprese, a young red wine, and chilled sparkle water (for those of you who do not speak Amáliaese, that would be "sparkling mineral water."). Perfect autumn dish, with the sage and meat.

Grrrr.

Someone I know is being railroaded completely unjustly. It is a very long story, and the person in question is far more interested in being obedient and certainly does not want some sort of campaign or anything to come to his defence (he would be vexed to find that I even know about the situation, but you know how it is with these Italians). I understand his point of view, especially considering his state of life, but there is something frustrating to see a good man be given so much grief, and to have to sit on my hands (although it is surely a good idea to literally sit on my hands, otherwise they might find themselves around an ordained neck, which would be decidedly the wrong approach to the situation).

There is a part of me that wants to get on the phone and organize and write letters and rattle cages and all of that, but I respect the wishes of the person who is really the victim of this mistreatment, so I will do no such thing, but I will ask all of you to pray for the intentions of this person, especially to ask for the intercession of any saint who persevered in spite of unjust treatment from his or her own superiors.

In The Bag Again

Teachout has fired another round of In The Bag. You know the rules:

"Time again for "In the Bag," the game that challenges you to tell the truth about your taste. The rules: you can stuff any five works of art into your bag before departing for a desert island, but you have to decide right this second. No dithering—the bad guys are beating on your front door. No posturing—you have to say the first five things that pop into your head, no matter how silly they may sound. What do you put in the bag?"

BOOK (FICTION): Italo Calvino's Baron in the Trees

BOOK (NONFICTION): A Traveller In Rome (cannot remember the author's name)

PAINTING: Birth of Venus, Boticcelli

CD: Paolo Conte's latest one (cannot remember the title)

FILM: Night of the Shooting Stars (Tornatore brothers)

Today is the first day of my last week at Arhoolie Records. As we release fewer titles each year, with a smaller amount being completely new recordings, it just does not make sense to have a full-time publicity person (we can push great records like this all we want and they still will sell only so much, and the cost per sale does not come down with more and more dollars thrown at it). It has been a great three years here, and I have met some incredibly interesting folks.

With the general slump in the record business, I am not too hopeful of finding a similar position in the near future (add to my nearly complete and total unwillingness to relocate anywhere between the Berkeley Hills and Viareggio and the fact that I will not work for a record label that does music I am uninterested in, and the chances get slimmer indeed). I am probably only going to call a few labels I know people at just on the lark that they are not spinning into recessionistic lay-offs, but I am not really going to be digging too deep for full-time record label work just yet (in a year, when the dust settles and we figure out how to make this Internet thingie work for us, then I will probably look for something again). I am going to be doing more and more writing for the newspapers and will be taking on some other projects involving writing for magazines as well as doing some record label projects (and the occassional Arhoolie project as things come up). I actually have enough work lined up for the upcoming month that I will have to carefully manage my time to get it all done, so I am not really worried about the whole thing.

One big thing that will change is that I will probably drop my nome de plume for writing record reviews. I don't know, but perhaps old Pete will get to retire for a piece. I might revive him if the situation changes (or if I am worried about brand dilution in publishing writing in different fields, as I would not want people to read food writing and think, "oh, isn't he the music critic?"). We will see, but I may send my Anglicized Puerto Rican buddy off on a long vacation. Who knows, maybe people will clamor for old Pete (I can imagine a letter, "what happened to Pete F.? This Keilholtz guy is an idiot!").

Another change is that I will not be blogging at lunchtime. I might blog at nap time, but my Arhooligan buddies will tolerate me munching on a sandwich in my office, but Amália will tolerate no such anti-social balderdash. Lunch must be spent talking about each piece of food to be eaten: "hmmmmm! Cannalope! Amália cannalope! Here, Babbo: Cannalope! MMMMMMMM!" No sitting at the computer stuffing whole sandwiches in my gob while demonstrating my typing prowess (as in, "that's not writing, it's typing").

Yes, starting next week, I will be a stay-at-home dad (well, our little apartment is cramped and dark, so we will probably be out and about, exploring the world quite a bit), working my freelance writing gigs in the evenings and at nap times. Otherwise, Amália begins her art history education, with a museum a week being the scheduled program (memberships are grand!), as well as lots of time hiking, riding choo choos and splashing around at the beach or Lake Temescal. We are going to shoot for daily mass, but I will start more moderately, with two being the first week's goal, then upping it to three after a few weeks, then four and so on.

We will probably make a point of pestering Jared, because he is a fun guy, because we periodically visit each other's studios to critique paintings, and because, well, Jared lives half a block from Lakeside Park, with a great playground, a giant bird sanctuary, botanical gardens, and Children's Fairland. In a month, Jared will probably start hiding and refusing to answer his door, but we will see. We will probably spend a good deal of time visiting Amália's godfather/Latin tutor on the days or afternoons he is not teaching. We will probably drag Mamma from her office once or twice a week to go down to Jack London Square to eat our lunches and watch Choo choos. I will probably teach Amália how to swim in the next month, while we still have warm weather.

I am a little nervous, as I have never had to come up with such a busy schedule of fun, learning, playing, not-overtiring, not-overstimulating before (and still carve out due time for cooking, artwork, and writing). Usually Melanie is around, and it becomes a tag team effort: you take Amália to the library while I prep our dinner, and I will give her her bath while you put away the dishes.

If someone suggested that this is what I would be doing a year ago, I would have sniffed, "oh no, I read Lileks, but I have no plans of following his footsteps." It is all a bit scary, and a lot exciting, and should really be a great adventure.

Oh Boy! Oh Boy! Oh Boy!

I just went to the Niman Ranch site to see all that they offered and found that they have lardo! If you have not experienced this, it is one of the great wonders of the culinary world. I have no idea how Niman Ranch's compares to the glorious lardo that I ate almost every day in Italy, but I am willing to give it a try. The best use is to slice it thinly and lay the slices on hot toast points. You will never have such a great antipasto, unless you have access to wild boar liver and can make a wild boar liver pate (I have a traditional Tuscan recipe, if you would like).

Alice Waters described it something like this: "cured pork lard? At first we asked, 'but how can anyone eat that' but after a bite we asked 'how can anyone do without it?'" I think it was Waters who said something like that. Anyway, I agree. Traditionally lardo is stored in beautiful marble jars, but I bought it vacuum packed in plastic and it was just fine. I am elated to find that Niman Ranch is offering this. I also noticed that they are now making pancetta, so I will have to try theirs. I have been getting Molinari's, which is outstanding, but I have to try Niman's.

One caveat is that Niman's Italian sausages are good mostly for grilling, but even then I prefer others (either my own, or the Molinari ones, and I have no idea if you can get Molinari products outside the Bay Area). They are fine sausages, but are more limited than typical Italian sausage.

Sage advice for autumn

I received an email from Peony Moss asking for advice on what to do with a bumber crop of sage, so I will make sage the feature of the week. It is an appropriate time to think about sage, since sage is one of those flavors that is naturally autumnal. You see, the Bay Area has about 2 weeks of spring around February, then back to autumn, a week of summer in April, winter from May to August, with a few absurdly warm summer days thrown in for good measure (keeps us neurotic), then our summer starts on Labor Day and lasts until about mid-October, then we begin autumn, which lasts until February, so we get a lot of practice in this autumn business.

Sage is one of those great herbs that just hollers "home." Even for people who grew up on TV dinners, deep down, their inner gourmet demands sage. One whiff and they will wax nostalgic for the childhood cuisine they never had.

My cousin Rita (my grandmother's first cousin, you do the figuring out of the exact term, we are lazy wops, so we just use cugina), who is my only serious rival as the Cook of the extended family (I am arbitrarily kicking Mario out of the running because he married into the family and is a Napolitanese, so it is a different cooking tradition, and you cannot compare apples to oranges, but he is a fine cook, who I would defer to in any but the most Tuscan purist situation) says that you cannot buy sage. Bought sage will not last. You must be given sage. We bought our sage and it is doing fine, and tastes great, but Rita is the better cook, so maybe she is on to something.

This email mentioned that she cannot get unbrined pork at her local markets. We found that situation one time when we happened to be at the local Satanway market and thought, "hey, some pork would be nice tonight." All they had was this garbage in brine. There are valid uses for brining, but unless I made the brine, or Alice Waters or Paul Bertolli did, there had better be some explaining to do. Lousy, overly lean pork needs brining, good pork benefits from it in specific situations. Markets that only sell brined pork are an abomination, and we should pray that they go out of business so that honest merchants can take their places.

We must cultivate the taste for good pork, as it is one of our front line weapons against Mohammedanism, but that is a different topic, and Ryan might read this and accuse me of ranting and then not come over Friday with his new knife to help me prep for Steve's party and then where will I be?

Sorry. I try not to do too many inside jokes, but some people need the occasional barb thrown their way, and Ryan is one of those. He is a smart fellow with great knife skills who is doing some silly thinking these days regarding Petrine Primacy, although he should know better. But we will discuss this over gin on Friday, and he will see the light, eventually (in spite of my ranting), so there!

Anyway, the situation with regard to mass market pork is terrible, and I recommended to Peony that she contact my neighbors at Niman Ranch. In the old days the great meat was Bird and Schell, then Niman-Schell, then Orville Schell went back to academia and Bill Niman is the undisputed king of tasty, honest pork and beef. His headquarters are walking distance from our house, so the local taqueria uses Niman Ranch organic pork for their carnitas. I might gripe about East Oakland once in awhile (like when my car was stolen), but it has its advantages!

So, the very first thing to know about sage is that you can rub it on your teeth and it freshens your breath. Or chop it finely and mix it with baking soda and brush with it. It lacks flouride, so I would not use it exclusively, but it whitens and freshens.

You can also fry the leaves in extra virgin olive oil and serve them on an antipasto plate. Yummm! Especially in the autumn, the glorious autumn.

If you haven't guessed, I have been eating figs and melon and vine-ripened organic heirloom tomatoes and am especially happy that the season is where it is right now.

I need a new browser!

I really hate the ie browser that comes bundled with AOL. People have recommended non-IE, non-Netscape browsers to me before, but I do not remember which ones. I would really appreciate any recommendations on this, as I hate what this one does to my site, and one of my favorite sites, Flos Carmeli is rendered almost completely unreadable by this stupid browser.

So, if anyone has had any great experiences with some of the free browsers out there, please let me know. Thanks. Obrigado. Grazie. Dankesehr.

Metablogging Question

One of the things that I really like about Movable Type is that I can see a list of the most recent comments, which are usually on recent threads, but sometimes are on items from the past. I am wondering if it would completely drive my readers crazy if I resurrected the occassional more than month-old post. Please comment. If it doesn't drive everyone batty, I may bring the MBTI post back from the dead.

Friday Afternoon Sermon

For those who are coming here looking for the Friday Afternoon Sermon, it is the post a few below about smoking regulations and the nature of bars. I don't want you to be confused and to think that the sermon is about baseball.

Har har har!

So, after all that on professional sports, provided Melanie still has extra tickets, Ann and her husband, Jaime, are going to come up to Oakland tomorrow to investigate this professional sports thing. We will be noticing whether or not the A's or the Marinaters have women on their teams, or if any of their players throw like girls. If so, we will duly note it and report tomorrow night or something like that.

I really like baseball but have not been as active a fan this season: too much other stuff to do for the most part. I am also annoyed at the extraneous stuff that one is constantly bombarded with: stupid contests, constant noise, loud "music", incessant promotions, etc. All of this stuff almost completely ruins the inherent serenity of the game. If the whole hype factor were eliminated, and the only sounds one heard were necessary or spontaneous ones, baseball would allow for more contemplation, more reflection, and would be a much superior pastime.

Leave the noise and roaring to football.

A Decent Friday Five

1. Who is your favorite singer/musician? Why?

I will address only the living ones: Singer: Thomas Hampson or Ute Lemper. I have always liked Hampson, but hearing him sing Mahler last year completely won me over. Ute Lemper has a great approach to the music of Weimar Germany and the French music halls. Musician: Hmmmm. Probably Jordi Savall these days. He is the best viola da gamba player out there.

2. What one singer/musician can you not stand? Why?

Brbra Streisand, because she has a crappy voice, bad taste, lame phrasing, and she is ugly, stupid, arrogant and obnoxiously leftist. Without the political stuff, she would simply be in the running with Michael Bolton and Celine Dion.

3. If your favorite singer wasn't in the music business, do you think you would still like him/her as a person?

I have no idea.

4. Have you been to any concerts? If yes, who put on the best show?

The best show was probably Chuck Mangione. I was totally blown away by what a great jazz player he is.

5. What are your thoughts on downloading free music online vs. purchasing albums? Do you feel the RIAA is right in its pursuit to stop people from dowloading free music?

Ripping off record labels and musicians is bad. Period. I don't care how rich you think they are. First, you would be surprised if you learned something about the matter. Record labels do not make tons of money on each disc. That is a stupid myth. The RIAA is right, but misguided. I think there are better ways of going about it.

Like I Said...

Bad ideas start in California, travel to NY, then hit the rest of the country. The District of Subsidia, the Serene Principality of the [crack] House of Barry, the home of our esteemed legislature, not to mention the Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, is now following our STUPID lead, once again. So, now, based on all sorts of pseudo-science and emotionalism, the health Puritans (apostates who substitute all sorts of outlandish idols for God), strike again.

I remember when the idiotic smoking ban hit our bars and the bloated pig of a local radio station had these "perspective" pieces from a gloating lawyer who was rejoicing that "now I can go into bars again."

"Again," I sputtered! When was he ever able to go into bars then, unless he smoked and then quit and became one of these crusaders? Of course he politely genuflected to nonsense health pieties, but then cut to the meat of the matter: his hair and clothes wouldn't stink. My bet: he went into a bar a couple of times when the policy kicked in, and then never went in again. This is obviously not a man who appreciates bars.

Bars are meant to be smokey and dark. They should smell of stale beer and smoke and the air should be thick with appropriate music: country or moody jazz or dark baroque pieces by Bach. Bars are not for everyone, either as hangouts or as places of employment. Alcoholics should not work in bars. Asthmatics or overly perky people should probably not work in bars either.

Ideally bars should also come installed with typewriters, and should supply paper at reasonable cost. They should have walk-in humidors with good cigars, as well as cheapo cigars for those who write detective books. A man who is typing in a bar should only be interrupted for two reasons: to ask him for a light, or to offer him a drink. Someone who interrupts a man at a typewriter in a bar for any other reason should be fair game for a broken nose.

Bars should be segregated. Protestants and Catholics should do their ecumenical dialog in other venues. One or two Guinesses and they might see eye to eye and sing songs together, but three or four and the word "Ulster" gets thrown around and someone orders a Bushmill's and all hell breaks loose.

Bars should have back rooms for those who want to be in a bar but don't want to be seen in a bar, or who don't want to be seen with whomever they are with in a bar. Back rooms must be full of cigar smoke. Never trust a back room deal when made by people smoking cigarettes. cigarette smokers should smoke cigars when making back room deals, out of deference to the political cartoonists, at the very least. Never trust a back room deal when made by people who do not smoke.

The back rooms do not need to be segregated, because a different protocol is in place there. After official closing time, the backroom should be reserved for VIPs. The writers, however, should be kicked out at closing, since the fresh air of the wee hours will do them good. Otherwise they might turn into Bukowski characters (Bukowski himself got plenty of fresh air at the track).

There are other sorts of bars, but they tend to be immoral. Singles bars, gay bars, or bars that play disco music should be shut down by the Morality Police. The people inside should be warned and sent home. Bars that look like they were designed in the 1980's should be shut down by the Aesthetics Police. French zinc countered bars are fine, as are the high-ceilinged workingman's bar, and both of those types require smoke for the proper ambiance as well.

Sports bars are probably an abomination, but there is something amusing about the notion. People go to a bar to sit on their duffs and drink and smoke to celebrate athletics. They should probably be shut down, but I will keep them open, so long as they are smoke-filled. Otherwise they will resemble gyms, and will probably start to smell like gyms. Also, people should require licenses to go to sports bars, with limits set.

Non sports bars should not have televisions in them. Televisions are conversation killers. They distract from writing and drawing and darts and billiards. If they are tuned to the news, they will encourage excessive despondant drinking.

Anyway, thanks to Fr. Jim Tucker for pointing this depressing story out. All I can say to you outside of California is "resist!" Even if, no, especially if these health puritan ideas appeal to you, realize that a bar is a special place. Smoke free atmospheres are ideal for a fitness club, not a bar. You will only be encouraging the wrong sort of bars from happening, and that will lead to real health issues stemming from immoral activity!

Professional Athletics and Women

In the comments box of the post gloating over the demise of the WUSA, I was asked what is wrong with women in professional sports, so here it goes! I should first clarify that I see no problem with women playing sports, particularly ones that do not come out of combat training, or ones that are full contact sports. While basketball is a contact sport, I have no objection to women playing basketball in high school (I object to ALL college sports programs for men and women, simply as a corrective to the over-emphasis that is put on them at too many colleges). However, such sport, when the level of competition is boosted by the addition of money, becomes grotesque when done by women. It is completely contrary to the dignity of women to dress in shorts and to run around acting as men in battle, all to scrounge for money. Games like golf and tennis, on the other hand, where the point isn't to have the bodies of the participants slam into each other in brute force, are perfectly suited to the dignity of women, although golf should only be played with a few rounds of single malt at the 19th, and that is questionably appropriate for women in public, so perhaps golf is not the best idea for women.

Men, on the other hand, have the duty of taking up arms if needed to defend the common good. Since sporting contests like football, basketball, etc. come out of the training for combat, it is entirely appropriate for men to hone these skills to the level needed for professionalism. Men keep their moral for combat up by undertaking contact sports. They are intended to take the blows of enemies to protect women and children, so it is perfectly fine for them to compete in these regards, even at a professional level.

Now, to take excessive interest in professional sports of any sort is a perversion of the right order, and should be avoided.

If you ever want to see how professional athletics distorts the dignity of women, take a look at your local women's football team. That is not how women should look. Period.

Storming Heaven

In this post Michelle suggests entrusting Terri Schiavo's case to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. This is a capital idea, and I have linked to Michelle's site. We should also pray for the conversion of the judge, as well as for repentance of the adulterous would-be murderer husband, Michael Schiavo.

Beyond that, I am still open to suggestions as to what can be done. Storming Clearwater? I don't know.

The Culture of Death

I have not blogged yet about the Terri Schindler-Schiavo case, mostly because the topic has been covered so well by Peony and Pansy, as well as by many others. Since the Kapo, I mean Florida judge, has sentenced her to death by dehydration and starvation, I am really at a loss as to what to say about where our society is headed. In 30 years over 40 million have been killed by the tragedy of abortion. Paul Hill was executed because he killed to show that killing was wrong (the sort of perversion of justice at every step of this shows how twisted our society has become).

This woman, who is clearly not brain dead, is going to be murdered by her husband with the full cooperation of the State of Florida, and the "civil liberties" community is going to remain silent, not wanting to take a stand for the basic protection of human life, because it might rock the boat with their other pro-death positions. I am sure that they will remain silent at every step as the Culture of Death advocates expand their web: Down's Syndrome children, people with Cerebral Palsy, eventually will it come down to those who do not have blue eyes?

"Really, it is better that they not live rather than have the horror of untermensch features. There. There. One shot in the arm and it will all be over."

I am known for the occasional bit of hyperbole, but this isn't it. The West fought Hitler and won the battle, but surely the number of untermensch babies murdered in their wombs, as well as this case would have brought great delight to the little housepainter with the funny moustache. Our birthrates are declining to perilous levels, we (and I include, especially include Europe in this) are threatened with Mohammedan expansion at every turn, and, as a culture we just do not seem to care.

Overall I find the whole business quite depressing, to tell the truth. I have signed petitions, but I do not know how much good they do. Certainly I pray, but I feel like I am dropping the ball on fighting the Culture of Death, like there is something more that I should DO. I am not sure about the efficacy of protesting, I actually don't think that a political solution will work. Certainly an armed uprising or any other desperate moves like that are doomed to only bring about more misery. I am convinced that we need a cultural solution to this mess, but I really don't know what it is. Massive street corner evangelization? Dropping pamphlets around town?

Sometimes I think the best is to do what we do in our daily lives and just be alert to ways to at least insert a germ of truth in the minds of our coworkers, friends, associates, etc. But that gets to be depressing, as well, when you know too many intelligent people who fall for the traps of relativism, materialism, paganism, and assorted tomfooleries and humbugs. I am not sure what is bleaker, to encounter a Catholic who consults a horoscope (or you can't find a major daily paper without one) or to encounter someone who has left the Catholic faith to join the Wiccans (after a brief pause with "scientific" naturalism).

Great Rhetoric, But the Theology!

If you have been following the dialog between Steven Riddle and myself regarding my rather dim view of Puritans, please make sure that you read this excellent post.

I agree strongly with Steven's assessment of Edwards's command of the language. In fact his description reminds me of another great poet who wrote demonic works about the nature of God (more times than not, I get the feeling that Milton is actually rooting for the Devil in Paradise Lost), not to mention the beautiful poetry found in the writings of the false prophet Mohammed! I am not so quick to give Edwards a theological pass for his conclusion.

First, the beginning clearly states that God hates the sinner. It is powerful language, and I admire the rhetorical skill, but theologically this is an abominable view of the relation between the Creator and a humanity He made in his Own image. Also, the almost Catholic invitation at the end for repentance rings a bit hollow. Edwards was still a Calvinist. The damned are damned because God wants them to be damned. That is what follows from the opening passages. The end of the sermon strikes me as softening up the crowd for the basket passing.

However, Steven has done a great job in writing about this, as he usually does, so go read it and may the conversation continue!

I sound like a broken record again!

Once again, I am overjoyed to read today's Terry Teachout column. He waxes quite eloquently on one of my favorite altomen, Bud Shank. Of all the strains of modern jazz, my favorite has to be the work that came out of the Stan Kenton sax section in the 1950's (and the fellows who were loosely affiliated with those guys, even just in spirit, so I get to include Chet Baker, Paul Desmond, etc.). I have learned over the years that the distinctions between "West Coast" and "East Coast" jazz are nonsense when looked at with any sort of critical eye. Is Getz West or East? Cool or hot? Before you answer those questions, really think. Can you call Getz a Philly musician or an LA musician? Cool tone, but wasn't it really just an individual take on the quintessentially New Yorker Lester Young's sound? And what about when he played quite hot with Oscar Peterson?

Anyway, I have seen Bud Shank in recent years, and he is as good as Teachout says. The only problem for me in listening to Shank is that his sound really makes me miss Gerry Mulligan, who was one of the absolute greatest. Mulligan could pull off dates with Thelonious Monk and Astor Piazzola, fit in with either, yet still sound essentially like Mulligan. Shank shares tremendous artistic sympathies with Mulligan, and I can't help but have a tinge of sadness over Mulligan's untimely death whenever I hear Shank (or Desmond, for that matter).

In fact it is hard to listen to that great post-Kenton music and not feel a tinge of melancholy over the fact that those sounds are now distinctly sounds of a lost golden age. I am not saying that there will be nothing better, but we will never have that sound again. So, do not pass up the opportunity to see Shank or Brubeck if they come around your parts. John Salmon, in the comments box to the post about Teachout's post on Desmond, mentions that Brubeck is playing with some Maynard Ferguson alums. I do not want to miss that!

The second part of Teachout's post is a marvelous reflection on viewing art. I highly recommend it, particularly his part about seeing reputations rather than paintings. That sort of honesty is remarkable in a critic (take note, Kenneth Baker), and is someting any of us who care about art must always keep in mind. I try to fight it by taking really long looks at art (most people I know hate going to the museum with me, and the feeling is mutual for the most part. They find the time I want to spend utterly vexing, and I view their agitation as something akin to the persitant whining of a seven year old: "Are we there yet?" No, we are not there yet, and we cannot stop at the Nut Tree this time (sorry, but you have to be very familiar with Northern California to get the reference to the dearly lamented late Nut Tree. I apologize to you Ausländer). The only way for me to reach any sort of detante with my friends in a museum is if they allow me to be the tour guide. I find they at least get an idea of why I take so long, even if they are find my search for minor chords of minor chords of the golden section astoundingly dull) and by analyzing pieces by way of a variety of approaches.

Anyway, Teachout is fantastic. Read him!

What is the etymology of his name, anyway? Sounds like he has some rabid leftist heritage: Teach-in plus walk-out or something? I guess it beats archaic German for Wedgewood, though.

Speaking of Germans, I misquoted Monty Python in my response to Steven's comment. It is actually funnier:

Germans are very difficult to offend. Try setting them on fire or calling their Mercedes' Volkswagens.

Central Valley Temptation Mitigated...

The bullfight Monday night was great. 4 out of 7 of the bulls were really quite good, and the 3 poor bulls were mansos, but not as bad as they could have been. The food, atmosphere and crowd were good, as well. 5,000 or 6,000 people enjoying a pleasant evening of feasting and taurine art and dancing in honor of Our Lady has to score about as close to a perfect evening as possible. As you know from an earlier post, I was tempted to move the family to Gustine that night: a combination of the light and the smells (well, not all the smells), the heat, all conducive to good living.

I did mention the mosquitoes, though. The air was so thick that at times one breathed mosquitoes, as well as supplied them with their meal almost constantly. However, when I wrote on Tuesday, they were not so much a problem. Well, yesterday evening and today the bites have all started to kick in. As I sit here eating my sandwich, I am itching all over, with lots of raised red welts, especially on my arms and neck (although the little suckers even get you through a shirt). I know better than to scratch at them, but, ouch! If West Nile Virus has hit the Central Valley, I will let you know, as there is almost a statistical certainty that if it were in the area, I would have gotten it, I have that many bites.

Fortunately insect bites and stings tend to get me big, but for a short period of time. I imagine that by tomorrow I will not notice much of anything, but I cannot imagine dealing with these things on a daily basis for two or three months a year. To the coast! To the coast! To the coast! Ah, seabreeze, how much I appreciate thee! You send our smog to Stockton and keep our bugs alee.

Robert Ryman

WOW! For the first time someone was referred to this blog looking for Robert Ryman (and from France, nonetheless - Bienvenue!).

Most people do not know Robert Ryman, which is a terrible shame, but I think I know why. First, his work is almost completely resistant to reproduction. He paints often very close to white: white paint on white ground, or near-white ground, but sometimes has other colors delicately hidden in the mix. What one sees in his work are incredible subtlety of texture and hue.

Second, Ryman is mistakenly identified as a minimalist, and he is no minimalist, a la Judd. What he is closest to (and calling this brilliant sui generis painter anything is an error to some degree or another) is a subtle and restrained Abstract Expressionist. Ryman's work must be carefully studied, and not once either, to reveal its charms in full. Fortunately, when they built the new SFMOMA they had a small room entirely dedicated to his work. There was a period when I was going to the museum at least once a week, and would always spend a good twenty minutes in this room, usually looking at one or two paintings. I would see people walk in, quickly glance at the paintings, maybe mutter something like, "oh, all white canvas. titter titter." and move on, which was too bad, because if they had stopped, taken a good look, they would have seen something much more interesting and ultimately more rewarding than the works that always get more attention.

The first time I really got to look at his work was at a major retrospective at the old SFMOMA in the Veteran's Memorial Building at Civic Center. It was during my college years and had driven up to the City with some friends. I think they were not too impressed, but something grabbed me in those paintings. I went back again and again. When they opened the new museum, which still impresses me as one of the few contemporary pieces of architecture that I like, the first thing that I noticed was that the third floor collection of permanent works was called "From Matisse to Diebenkorn." Yipee! Diebenkorn is mentioned by name in the title! Sure enough, lots o'Diebenkorn. Perfect. On the fourth floor was the more contemporary stuff: boring crap by Gerhard Richter, moderately interesting dripped lead installation by Serra, hideous crap by Jeff Koons, and, what is in this little room? Stop breathing for a second. All Robert Ryman. Something like eleven paintings, arranged with ample space on the clean white walls, with the light wood, polished floor was incredible. Move over Rothko Chapel! For a modern space for contemplation, this was the ultimate.

It was in this room over the course of the next few years that I got to really study the textures, the compositions, and subtle colorations of this great painter. If our era has a modern artist in touch with the spirit of the Baroque, it is Ryman, yet he works his baroque in such subtle ways, that the experience is akin to walking into a silent church and very gradually noticing that a brilliant and loud Bach passacaglia is actually coming from the pipe organ, yet somehow obscured by silence, only revealing itself to those who stop and listen. That paradox embodies the experience of a long look at Ryman.

For good and for bad, the staff at SFMOMA changes things around from their permanent collection, and the little room is no longer the Robert Ryman exclusive room. They have a couple of his paintings up in the collection, and may some day restore this room to its Rymanesque purity, which would be wonderful.

I don't suppose that I recommend buying a book of Ryman reproductions, or searching him out on the internet. You really need to see it first hand, but next time you are in a museum and see his name, stop and look for a good ten minutes. Don't try to see anything in particular, just soak in the direction of the brush strokes, the shadows formed by the textures, any underlying marks. If you are getting distracted or not able to focus, move on and come back later, but do yourself the favor of really looking at the work of this often overlooked artist.

Great article.

Look, in Biblical days it was considered a miracle when an ass spoke. Chris Hitchens speaks all the time, and we do not see it as a miracle. The great miracle is when he is so correct as he is here. I am frequently astounded at the notions of health that I encounter once in awhile.

I give up meat for Lent. It is a good, time-honored penance, and has some added spiritual benefits, which I have posted on this last Lenten season. I am amazed at the times I get the question, "do you find that you feel better when you are not eating meat?" Hmmmm. Never realized I felt poorly in general. No, I don't feel better! If you want to feel better through diet, add a Sapphire martini to the diet, but don't think that eating glorious pig is going to make you feel bad. 9 out of 10 people who seek these cures have nothing physically wrong with them. What they need is to go to Confession and to go to Mass.

Anyway, read the article. Hitchens is very good.

Two important commemorations today!

Once again, thanks to Gerard Serafin, I have found a couple of important commemorations today:

September 17, 1179: Hildegard of Bingen, a German abbess, mystic, author, musician and preacher who received visions of God from the age of 5, dies at age 82.

September 17, 1776: 247 Spanish colonists consecrate their California mission of San Francisco, today a city of 725,000.

As my regular readers know, I am a huge fan of "avant garde" music, particularly Stockhausen, Varese, Webern, Xennakis, and Berio, but also of the first wave of avantgardisti, the ars nova practitioners, led by their ringleader and manifesto writer Bishop Philippe de Vitry. Now, this 14th Century avant garde was fantastic, but not without precedent. There was an earlier composer (often mistakenly called the first composer) who composed beautiful otherwordly music who has only recently (past 15 or 20 years) received her due. If you ever have a chance to hear Hildegard von Bingen's music performed live, do so.

The same year that the Freemasons were busy waging war against Anglicans in Massachussetts, out here in California the Franciscans were building a society based on the Gospel. We can argue until we are blue in the face how successful the mission system was (I personally admire it greatly. It was not as perfect as it should have been, but all of those Indians who received the Grace of Baptism are much better off than they were before), but the seeds of the Catholic identity of California were planted by Bl. Junipero Serra and his confrères.

Even as wave after wave of midwestern Protestants invaded southern California, the mission makes its imprint. As Richard Rodriguez points out, a California road atlas reads like a litany:

Sta. Barbara, ora pro nobis!
San Luis Obispo, ora pro nobis!
San Miguel Arcangelo, ora pro nobis!

And where else do you get Calvinist churches named after Popes but in California (San Clemente Presbyterian Church)?

Sometimes we might think we are losing the battle to materialists, neo-pagans, funnymentalists, etc., but we must never give up hope when we have such powerful patrons!

In many ways, when I think of the schizophrenic nature of California, which, as Jeff Culbreath points out, is like France (we have the best and the worst), I see the epitome in that in the Greatest City on North America: The City of St. Francis of Assisi. For all of its faults, geologic and otherwise, San Francisco is still a sparkling jewel on the Pacific. Nowhere else in the United States, besides perhaps Portland, OR, is the concept of a city as well understood. I get frustrated with her sometimes, even tempted to move to Gustine or Fiddletown, but a two hour walk through just about any of her neighborhoods changes that!

San Francisco suffers from smugness and a strange inferiority complex. I see both of those as the faults of not living true enough to her Catholic commission.

California Uber Alles

Eve Tushnet, an otherwise bright young blogger from DC writes some typical comment about California: "Let them fall into the sea already." About once a week I encounter this sort of balderdash in the blogosphere. I generally comment on it with a snide remark like, "fine, we'll leave, but then who will you get to pay your state's relief bill, to supply you with vital defense aerospace industry, to entertain you, to feed you, etc."

I especially get this attitude when dealing with the District of Subsidia or Byrdland or other such regions that seem to survive solely on the largess of states like California that contribute way more to the federal tax collection than they get out of it.

I am not saying that California is perfect, but to have someone from a City that elected Marion Barry as mayor, after he got out of prison is absurd. Sure we have terrible politicians, and we pass dumb laws out here. Attack those politicians, attack those dumb laws, but PLEASE do not go out later and follow our dumb example, then have the gall to complain about us.

These attitudes are a little too much like encountering a Frenchman who complains about American culture, yet sees every Hollywood Schlockbuster, listens to Madonna Ciccone, patronizes EuroDisney, etc.

If you are not in California and think our ideas are stupid, then you had better make sure that your state does not follow suit in two years! Generally bad ideas start in Berkeley, Santa Monica or Davis. They get justly laughed at. Oakland follows in a year, then San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, then the rest of the state, then New York, then Washington, Minnesota, Massachussetts, and then the rest, with the exception of Nevada, Montana, and maybe Alabama, who hold out until it becomes federal law.

But even better than griping about us, or even fighting our ideas when they land in a statehouse near you, is working to change our culture right here in the Golden State. Imagine what would happen if California were turned around. Then you would see the fruits in your own land in just a few years.

Wishing that we would leave the union or fall into the sea will only make us angry, and you will not like us when we are angry.

Good News!

I am not opposed to professional sports in general, except that I have been known to turn on baseball when I am stuck in Giants traffic trying to get to mass or Lectura Dantis (I normally love baseball). Once the weather is cooler, I like football, especially on Monday nights with pizza and beer. I am probably somewhat neutral to soccer, although I like to watch Italy do well in World Cup (especially against Argentina, although it is even better when Argentina doesn't qualify).

However, I am totally opposed to professional women's athletics (OK, I'll give a pass to tennis and golf, and some sports I object to anyone doing for money, so those are not gender issues). They are quite simply wrong at just about every level. So, it is with great joy that I pass on the news that the women's soccer league has suspended operations.

Beyond my obvious glee at the demise of any professional women's sport league, I am wondering what the organizers were thinking. Soccer is primarily a sport for children in this country (most of whom never really get the game and grow out of it in high school), so why they thought that they would popularize it by boosting women into it is a mystery. Obviously they should have listened to me earlier, but instead sank money into it and encouraged antics like that young woman who ran around the field half naked in celebration of her athletic prowess (yuck, I repeat, yuck). So we can only hope that the promoters of this degrading spectacle lost tons of money in it, and that the young women involved in the whole thing escaped with some semblance of their dignity left.

We can only hope that the WNBA and the Women's Professional Football League follow in the WUSA's footsteps!

Today...

September 16, 1498: Tomas de Torquemada, the first Spanish Inquisitor General, dies.

Let us pray for the canonization of this holy and oft-slandered friar.

News item courtesy of Gerard Sarafin.

The Central Valley

The bullfight last night was fantastic, but I will write about the actual bullfight later this evening or Thursday night, as it deserves a full review here. Getting to the bullfight and coming home were interesting, mostly because of the discussions Jared and I had, but also because of the scenery.

Although threatened by some of the most hideous suburban sprawl imaginable, there are still belts of agriculture not too far from Oakland. I have no idea how much longer they will last, as the ugly ticky tacky spreads like a virus, covering our gorgeous golden hills with grey boxes (now becoming so ugly that I almost miss the silly houses of twenty gables from the '90's), sitting nearly on top of one another, but with just enough space around them to maintain a fiction of a private yard. It does not matter that there are neither real yards, nor interesting public spaces in these things, as the children are inside playing Nintendo, munching on Chips and the parents are surfing between infotainment news shows and infomercials, chasing Prozac with Diet Coke.

That is the great thing about air conditioning. Look at all we can now do! You literally cannot live without it in Livermore! That and garage door openers.

And on this land that once yielded the best produce on Earth, one can now drive an easy 5 minutes to the Albertsafeway to buy produce that arrived last week from Chile! The convenience is mind boggling.

However, there are still pockets, still areas of live oak scrub and Spanish grass and tarantulas and horse farms, still areas where the old barns decay with more beauty than you can think possible.

As you climb out of the Livermore Valley, you see one of our peculiar windmill farms, a now-neglected relic of the Jerry Brown administration. Most of the windmills are motionless now, locked down to prevent injuring birds, but they are still an interesting sight. The hills are formidable, golden brown and rolling into steep canyons, but stark and angular where cut into for roads and rails. In fact a railroad bridge crosses Interstate 580, hinting at the Romanesque, although betrayed by the steel construction.

The shadows on these various road cuts are long, diagonal patches that always remain in my imagination as purple or blue (no doubt thanks to Diebenkorn and Thiebaud), as opposed to the shadows on the hills, which always take me back to early drawing exercises: cross hatching shadow on an egg (of course this is the point of said exercises!).

What really strikes me, though, is the drive South on Interstate 5 to Gustine. The late summer light makes the orchards, the hills, the farms, glow in dusty gold. Here and there we zip by a canyon with a stream, little riparian oases in the semi-arid hills or the stark concrete shores of the California Aquaduct, carrying water to the farms of the Westlands (a whole other story). The water in the canal is blue, reflecting the big blue sky overhead, but not an inviting blue.

Inviting blue water is in Lake Tahoe (until you reach about knee-deep and realize how cold it is), or Tamales Bay, or Bora Bora. The concrete canals scream "Drown Here!" Even on a hundred plus day, that blue water threatens much more than it tempts.

Last night was not 100 degrees, but a pleasant mid-eighties sort of evening. The Mosquitos were thick, as were the other insects that crowded the bullring lights (opaque cloud of them at times).

Gustine is a little town in the Central Valley. It is primarily Portuguese, with a prominant Catholic Church (modern and ugly, though) and a good sized Portuguese hall. Modern Protestant suburbia is striking at the town, however, with a development of ticky tacky on the South side of town, but I can't see how long it will last, as Gustine is really too far to commute to San Francisco from, and it is not the hub of any major industry.

I am tempted by the Central Valley whenever I am in it. I grew up in it, and always made a point that I would get out as soon as I could (which I did), but there is something that always draws me back, if only for a few hours here and there, or a weekend in Sacramento.

I am learning why I like Teachout so much

Today, Terry Teachout has posted an interesting post on Shostakovich, as well as a mention that Paul Desmond is his favorite jazz musician. I was in high school when Desmond made a huge impact on me (first with Brubeck's Time Out, then the rest). I still love to listen to the recordings he made with Dave Brubeck. Desmond was one of the most inventive alto saxaphonists ever. His conception of phrase was incredible. His relaxed tone hid some of the most complex melodies ever improvised.

I never got to see Paul Desmond live, as he died before I was going to jazz concerts, but I have seen Brubeck (even got to meet him once when he, Jerry Mulligan, and many other heroes of mine were on the same plane from New York to SF. I was returning home, they were coming over for Monterrey Jazz) many times. Brubeck with the talented reedman Bill Smith is fine, but there was something utterly irreplacable in Paul Desmond's sound. At least that sound was preserved on recordings!

Os Toiros!

In about 15 minutes I will be leaving for my trek into the Central Valley to a little island of Azoran Culture in the middle of a corn field:

GUSTINE
Bella Vista Plaza September 15 --- 8:00 p.m.
Our Lady of Miracles Celebration "Nossa Senhora dos Milagres"

Cavaleiro Joao Carlos Pamplona (Acores)
Cavaleiro Praticante Tiago Pamplona (Acores)
Cavaleiro Praticante Eduardo Costa (Los Banos)
Novilheiro Mario Miguel (Acores)

Forcados Amadores de Tertulia Tauromaquira Terceirense

Toros: Manuel Costa, Jr. (Los Banos)

It has been a terrible season for me, bullwise. I have missed way too many, but tonight should be great. I will be going with my friend Jared and will post a review of the festa later in the week.

To make up for it even more, I will be in Tijuana to see Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza, who will share the sand with a couple of decent Tijuaense matadores, one of whom, Cesar Castaneda, I have seen do some great work (although he is often derided because he was a television actor before becoming a torero). I can honestly say that to see only Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza in a year would make up for seeing nothing else all year. He is magnificent. If you are anywhere close to the border you should go see him (even if you do not think you like bullfighting), and by close to the border, I mean anywhere from Portland, Oregon on down. He is really that good.

I even say this as a fan of matadores more than rejoneadores, but if all rejoneadores were like him, I think that I might go to the other side.

Tonight I am most curious to see Eddie Costa. He was really good last year, and I have not heard reliable reports from this year (nor have I seen him this year). However, there are many factors involved: the quality of the bulls, for instance, can break a performance.

Old Oligarch has a good one here...

The Old Oligarch is one of the blogs that I like to read. The author, who goes by a nome de plume, teches theology and is also a gun aficionado, holds his liquor, as they said in the good old days, and writes quite well. I highly recommend his blog, and am adding it to the links list.

In this post he writes about the need for lay theologians to be on call, ready for the pastoral dimension of their work that they did not think they were signing up for. He makes some outstanding observations about the many people out there who thirst for knowledge, and have no one to turn to. It is not really so surprising that garbage like The Da Vinci Code can be so popular, as people want to learn, and this stuff comes along pretending to offer the knowledge they seek, and they do not have the academic tools needed to verify (or they are too lazy, or a mixture of both is at play) what is offered.

A very interesting post.

Much Better than Friday Fives: Courtesy of Teachout

First, read the rules of the game over here, then post your own Bag of Art. Quickly now!

PAINTING: Richard Diebenkorn's Seawall.

MUSIC: Thelonious Monk's Solo Monk

NOVEL: Ignazio Silone's Bread and Wine

FILM: My Father's Glory

POP SONG: Grateful Dead's "Sugar Magnolia"

Now, post yours!

Four good books on the matter

Here are four good books to read that can get you thinking about semiotics (or semiology, as Barthes uses. Not exactly the same, but close enough).

1. de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. McGraw-Hill Publishers, New York, 1959. This is where it all began, in modern terms. de Saussure suggests at an overarching study of signs, part of which would be linguistics. It is not essential to read this book, but it will be referred to so often it is just easier to read it and know what he was talking about. We get from him the crucial distinction of langue/parole, which is picked up in the next book:

2. Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. Hill and Wang, New York, 1964. The more I read the late great French critic Roland Barthes, the more I like him. This is a short book, and it is one of his drier ones. For a good read go with Empire of Signs (also Hill and Wang), which is a "practical" application of these theories (if you know the book, you will understand the scare quotes), but this book is not too dificult for the average voracious reader and it is more systematic. It is also very well written.

3. Eco, Umberto. Misreadings (English Edition, translated by William Weaver, of course). Harcourt Brace, Orlando, 1993. If you are reading these in order, I have inserted this little, fun book to relieve the intensity of two early semiotics books in a row. Misreadings should help temper the urge to over-apply semiotics and will give you a good appreciation of the humor with which Eco can bring to the topic.

4. Eco, Umberto. A Theory of Semiotics. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. 1979. If you read only one of these books, this should be it. Fantastic. Read it and read it again. There is a lot in here, and it is well presented, although certainly not light beach reading. Summer's over and it is time to dig into something real!

Blame it on Peony and Steven Riddle!

Well, not really, blame it on me, as I am the one who keeps dragging semiotics into everything. I know that I promised MUSIC analysis, but I keep thinking about this semiotics discussion and keep thinking that I could do better, could explain things clearer, could relate semiotics to Catholic theology better, so here is more of it:

Semiotics and Deconstructionism

Peony mentioned deconstructionism in a recent post on all of our discussions of semiotics, so I thought that I should take the opportunity to discuss this aberrant trend in academia. While deconstructionism borrows heavily from the language of semiotics, it is indeed a bastard step-child, looking not at ascertaining truth but in finding power relations in every aspect of human life.

Deconstructionism is based on the Marxist notion that all reality is socially constructed to maintain power relationships. Its practitioners search everything for hidden codes that exist solely to maintain the status quo. Certainly when taken in proper proportion to the search for Truth, Goodness and Beauty, there is some small validity to this search. For instance, what does the architecture of a public building say to us about the assumptions of the builders in regards to the role of the people and the role of the state, etc.? Perfectly valid [I left this document open on the desktop when I went to bed. Amália came by this morning and added her own annotations: vv, \\/. I am really not sure how to respond. I suppose she has a point].

Where it goes off the rails is when it assumes that all human discourse is inherently about the discourse of power. Often deconstructionists take a paranoid look at things, completely ignoring, for instance, the technological necessity or artistic fantasy that an architect may have had motivating him. A well-known example of this misreading is when modernist architects come up with a variety of goofy readings of meaning in a pitched roof. Pitched roofs happened because nature serves us things like snow and rain, which, if they had no place to go would place inordinate weight on the structure. They have nothing to do with the bourgeois aspirations at nobility.

In places where the climatic realities do not call for the forms used, we may suspect some sort of power discourse, but would probably find more profit in looking towards sentimental attachments towards past places and eras. Surely this nostalgic yearning can be a nefarious scheme to maintain an institutional hierarchy in enshrining some past ideal (the way Mussolini was trying to recreate an ideal terza Roma), but to look at that first and ignore the fact that a builder of a Californian pseudo-Tudor may be simply a Shakespeare fan is to completely ignore the complexity of human aesthetics and taste.

For a deconstructionist, however, a pseudo-Tudor is nothing more than an affirmation of Anglo hegemony, replete with sexism, racism and class oppression. Even an architecture that romanticizes peasantry is suspect, as, in the narrow minds of deconstructionists, such a romanticism must inherently be a power play to keep the poor content in their poverty.

In the case of pseudo-Tudors, there is often a nouveau riche desire to flaunt the rewards of material success, to attach the nouveau riche to the good taste of old money, etc. But what of the fellow who builds a pseudo-Tudor simply because he admires (for whatever reason) the sense of scale and proportion found in the English originals? Such a question cannot even be considered by the deconstructionist unless some psychological foundation can be established which agrees in lock step with Marxist class analysis.

The deconstructionist borrows the tools of semiotics only to point to the underlying Marxist ideology. If we find, through the tools offered by the discipline of semiotics, a compelling argument for an interpretation of the form of a building in Catholic theology, the deconstructionist will immediately assume that such theology only serves to keep the oppressed in their wretched state, since the deconstructionist cannot recognize Truth, Goodness, or Beauty as anything outside of social constructed norms designed to maintain the status quo. This is his disease and his curse.

The fact that Liberalism, the underlying philosophy behind laissez-faire capitalism and politicized sexuality, is diametrically opposed to Catholic theology is completely lost on the deconstructionist. A thoroughly Catholic building would still have to be seen as only serving capitalist masters.

Often in academia I have found intelligent Marxists, but not in the field of deconstruction. They are a pack of single-minded ideologues, who are utterly incapable of viewing the world outside of the blinders imposed by Marxian analysis. Because Marxism rests on completely unsound philosophy, deconstructionists rely heavily on jargon and grammatical opacity. Jacques Derrida, for instance, writes books of complete gibberish, gussied up in trendy jargon, intended primarily as an identifying badge to fellow Marxists and poseur art history majors who want to have some two-bit artspeak to adorn the walls of tomorrow’s flash in the pan exhibition.

To listen to a bunch of these posturing fools at a symposium is distressing. To see them be given a pass because most people are too lazy to take the time to dig into what they are saying to see that it is nothing but empty lingo is even worse. One of the horrific side effects of the maddening over-specialization of academia (which began as people learning more and more about less and less and has degenerated to people learning less and less period) is that many academics lack the fortitude to say that they do not understand what is being said. They assume that they do not understand because they missed it, not because there is nothing to understand to begin with. There was some story by some Dane about this phenomenon. “Well, Derrida has a PhD in this, so he must know what he is talking about.”

Hardly. Derrida is a fool, and I challenge anyone to go through one of his major works and mine any significant truth from it. Most of the times a careful reading of his work will show that he is saying nothing and using many words to get there. As I mentioned in the comments box, diagram his sentences. Substitute the antecedents for pronouns, replace arcane terminology with its definitions. Then tell me what he is saying. If he weren’t so respected among timid academics, the results would be nothing more than side splitting laughter. I would not have been allowed to get away with such sloppy, poorly thought-out writing in high school, let alone in the excellent Music Department at UC Santa Cruz (I imagine that Ann will mention a professor or two who would have fallen for it, but they would definitely be the exceptions to the rule, and the dullest of our faculty tended to error in other directions, so even they would not have allowed such balderdash to pass for analysis).

One thing to always remember when dealing with Marxists is that Marxism purports to being a “scientific” method of studying society and economics. Yet, just how this science is conducted is a baffling mystery. Science is centered around the careful comparison and contrasting of controlled elements and experimental elements, and nowhere do the Marxists actually do this. Instead they replace their dogma for other dogmas and enforce their own twisted orthodoxy, often by inserting their own jargon into as much academic discourse as possible.

As Catholics we need to follow the lead of our Holy Father John Paul II and reclaim the best of academia for the service of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. One of my complaints about certain Traditionalists is their insistence that we rely solely on Scholasticism (please note that not all Traditionalists are of this point of view). I am a huge admirer of St. Thomas Aquinas, but we cannot ignore the rigorous thought that has gone on in secular philosophy. We cannot even afford to ignore the not-so-rigorous thought that has gone on in secular philosophy, rather we must study it in order to refute it and to point out its flaws and lay its fraudulent premises bare on the cement, that they may bleed out and die, releasing their adherents to the search for Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Semiotics can yield great fruit to the Catholic literary critic or art critic or social commentator, and must be reclaimed for the real foundation of the liberal arts, namely that pursuit of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. It is why orthodox, bright young Catholics are needed at the large public institutions. We must confront the enemy wherever he may be, and the Fortress Catholicism approach is a grave error. Certainly there are young people who need the careful, sheltered formation that goes on in those various seminaries for the married vocation, but there is a profound need for us to invade each and every educational institution and to evangelize simply by witnessing to truth.

One of the most important things that we can do is to read Gramsci and familiarize ourselves with his tactics, as they are as brilliant as they are misguided. If we can turn the tables on the Left and use our knowledge of their tactics against the enemy, we will go far, as Truth is on our side.

In closing, let me offer this quote from the Introduction to the English edition of Umberto Eco’s Misreadings:

“I adapted these attitudes of overinterpretation to the most famous Italian novel of the nineteenth century. Most English-language readers will not be familiar with I promessi sposi (though an English translation exists, The Betrothed), but it should suffice to know that my Joycean reading is applied to a classic that dates from the early nineteenth century, its style and narrative structure recalling Walter Scott (for example)more than Joyce. Today I realize that many recent exercises in “deconstructive reading” read as if inspired by my parody. This is parody’s mission: it must never be afraid of going too far. If its aim is true, it simply heralds what others will later produce, unblushing, with impassive and assertive gravity.”

Mass Today

Normally we cross the bay to go to mass at The National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi in North Beach, San Francisco. They have an amazing schola cantorum, fantastic friars, good preaching, etc. The liturgy is reverent and beautiful, with a good amount of Latin. I would prefer more, but it is enough to meet the US RDA of Latin.

However, today was a big bicycle race that makes driving in the area a mess, so we went to St. Margaret Mary's in Oakland, which is about 8 blocks away and offers the Indult mass as well as a good Latin Novus Ordo (as well as good priests, a decent but amateur schola, and fairly vibrant parish life). We went to the 10:30 Latin Novus Ordo, and were pleasantly surprised to see our new bishop, Allen Vigneron outside in his miter and accompanied by the Knights of Columbus honor guard.

It was a beautiful mass, and the preaching was outstanding. We have a great bishop in Vigneron. Each and every Catholic in the diocese of Oakland should write the Holy Father a letter to thank him for this bishop. Wow!

Tomato Grappatini Modifications

Today I got a whole flat of delicious, organic heirloom tomatoes. Since I had just posted it, Melanie and I set on the tomato grappatini recipe with a vengeance. I think I have it perfected, except for the color. I will get a bottle of Rosso Antiqua and see if that works. I also want to try sweet vermouth, but there is only so much experimenting with potent grappa cocktails one can do in a day. I basically develop cocktail recipes in a progressive fashion: I start with the simplest thing and add as I sip. Therefore, when I get to the end of one cocktail, I stop, which is about a good limit on a hot day (unless we are talking gin and tonic. We aren’t talking gin and tonic, are we?).

I basically made a raw tomato and basil juice, as described in the earlier recipe, but I was out of coffee filters ( I rarely drink drip coffee), so I used cheesecloth, which did not quite filter it to clear. So I had what looked like pink grapefruit juice. Fine. I can work with that. So I put one shot of it in the shaker with one shot of grappa and a dash of extra dry vermouth and stirred. It tasted pretty good, but needed acidity, so I added some freshly squeezed meyer lemon juice. Just about there, so I did the olive oil finish. Yum (but not the best looking, I admit). The color was not attractive, so I added a couple of dashes of angostura bitters. Excellent for the flavor, and helped with the color. Further experimentation did not yield happy results, although nothing as to make it undrinkable. Swell. Tomorrow I will experiment with sweet vermouth and rue flavor instead of basil. Full report later.

Right now I am making arista on a wood fire, which will be served with the gazpacho I made as a result of having a lot of tomato pulp around.

Our Lady of the Miracle

Monday is one of the big California Bullfighting events of the year, the festival for Our Lady of the Miracle. Unfortunately I will only be able to get there in time for the bullfight on Monday night, so I can only report on that, but if you are in the Central Valley this weekend, I recommend you make the trip to Gustine.

I will give a bullfight report, which should be interesting, because two of the horsemem are from the Azores, as are the forcados. I do not like the ring it is in, because it is ovoid, but I like the venue overall. The best food is at Gustine, certainly.

As the Spanish Nationalist Air Force pilots would say before each mission: "Vamos al toros!"

Friday Five

Friday Fives have been dumb recently, but this week's takes the cake. The first four questions are dull but OK, but then question five is just silly. I am passing on it. Sorry.

In Memoriam Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash died this morning. I can think of nothing to say beyond, "go listen to Live at Folsom Prison." He was one of the great ones.

Speaking of Teachout

I have not done a Sept 11 memorial here. Others have done them better. Instead I offer you artistic hope: Read this article on what comes after postmodernism. He is wrong on a couple of points, but overall he is correct. I am more than happy to see the end of postmodernism. It was a tedious fraud from the get go and will not be missed. Gallery openings had become wretched parades of insufferable hipsters, looking at art that was as humble in its achievement as it was arrogant in its pretence.

Teachout credits Sept 11 with bringing down the curtain on this crap. He may be right.

oops

In restoring the links I forgot about Terry Teachout. Read everything he wrote since Sept. 8, especially the stuff about Frank Lloyd Wright and the quotes from Lileks (who is particularly brilliant today).

Tomato Grappatini

Go to the farmers' market and pick out the most flavorful organic heirloom tomatoes you can find. Core and juice them, and strain the juice. Do not mash the fruit up, as we are looking for clear juice (use the fruit for some other cooking). Add some celery leaves (or lovage or French rue or fresh basil), and some finely chopped cucumber (optional). Let sit in the refrigerator. Strain the juice again through a coffee filter. Chill for a few hours. Mix the chilled, clear fresh tomato juice with a shot of grappa and a couple of drops of highest quality balsamico and serve in a chilled martini glass. Garnish with an anchovie-stuffed olive, a cube of fresh mozzarella and an orange cherry tomato. You may optionally float a tiny bit of high quality extra virgin olive oil or even a single drop of black truffle oil on top.

Where soup meets salad meets cocktails!

Semiotics in Music

One field that is particularly undeveloped is Musical Semiotics. It is a field that is ripe for it, because so much of western art music is based on the same foundation: Gregorian chant. Sometimes mining a piece of music for signs is easy: the oft used Dies Irae motif, for instance, or to take it to a higher level, a juxtaposition of Dies Irae with Deutschland Uber Alles could be a rather ham-fisted (yet accurate), sign for Nazi Germany.

The richest pieces to mine for signs are the late Romantics and post-Romantics: Gustav Mahler, Dmitri Shostakovich, Alexandr Scriabin, etc. I was first getting interested in semiotics in college and reading a lot of Eco, Barthes, Culler, etc. About a year into it, I was surprised when out of the blue, my theory professor, Anatole Leiken, announced that we were going to talk about applying semiotics to music. Prof. Leiken used Shostokovich as his example, and we studied a piece of his as being a biting critique of Stalinist cultural policies. It was hard to argue with the content, as the juxtapositions were clear, but there seemed something fishy about it. Why would someone in the middle of such a brutal regime risk his neck this way? Surely it wouldn't be a message in the bottle, since very few would get it outside of Russia.

But the more Prof. Leiken talked about Shostokovich, the more it made sense. They guy already expected to be arrested and enGulagged. To make it easier for his family, he used to spend nights standing outside his apartment, dressed and packed and ready to go when the police arrived. Since he thought he was a dead man, it was a way of getting it off his chest. He also knew that the Stalinists were such blunderheads they would not get the commentary (since he titled everything in an excruciatingly Commie orthodox manner: Ode to the Victims of Fascist Oppression).

Also, there is a rich tradition in Russia that goes back to the Czarist age of hiding political discourse in literary theory and criticism. Shostokovich simply moved this tradition into his own field.

What is interesting in the example of Shostokovich is that he worked in the full conscious knowledge that he was encoding his commentary in his work. I am more interested in the play between the language and the work in which the author is only partially aware, where the language caries its own burdens into the mix, and reveals to us aspects of our culture that we would not think of otherwise (as long as they are possible, plausible and proportionate - see my response to Peony in the last semiotics post).

What is interesting about this approach to musical analysis is that it is predicated on the Catholic foundation of our civilization. It's all based on the Chant!

All of this leads me to an announcement:

Expect the next two parts of The Building Blocks of Music as well as the next analysis this weekend! And please, keep in mind as we discuss Victimae paschali laudes, how these chants work their way into all later Western art music.

Music for Autumn

It is a little too early around here for this. The days are still pretty warm, and the nights don't drop down too quickly, so I will hold off on playing this for another three weeks, but it might be closer where you are, and this way you have some time to get them.

I have always found the best records to listen to in autumn are John Coltrane's Crescent and the Tony Bennet/Bill Evans record. On a warmish autumn day (but with a little hint of chill in the air), eat pork arista, oven fried potatoes, and a good pinot noir. Then settle back with a small piece of flourless chocolate cake and a glass of calvados, and listen to the Coltrane record. That is autumn.

Semantics and Semiotics, part II

I am afraid that I am muddying the water more by my definitions than I am clarifying. I hate when that happens. Of course these are complex disciplines, and they are even further confused because they overlap. For instance, I don't think you can really jump into semiotics without some basic understanding of poetics or cultural anthropology (ethnography).

Another thing that makes it difficult is that the boundaries are still being wrestled over. I am tempted to say that semiotics is semantics applied to all of human communication (and by some of us Catholic nuts to the communication between God and humans, but this gets into really long-winded conversations that I do not have time for right now - please bring it up later). However, a more learned semiotician might object to this, saying that semantics is a particular discipline and that, while semiotics comes out of semantics, has grown and developed as to really be seen as something completely apart. He would probably be right, but I will stand with my simple distinction. I am a bit of a simpleton, and it works better for my gin-addled brain.

So here are a couple of examples of how semiotics can work:

A semiotician and a semanticist are walking down the road. They see a car cut another car off. One of the cars is driven by a 30-ish fellow with a "Kiss me, I'm Italian" sticker, as well as olive skin, dark hair, etc. The other is driven by another 30-ish fellow, but with a Harris tweed driving cap, a missing front tooth. and a shamrock pin. They pull over and the Italian starts yelling loudly and gesticulating madly. The Irish fellow gets out and quietly seethes, getting redder and redder, his fists clenching up. The Italian makes a gesture and the Irishman says something and the next thing you know they are coming to blows. A policeman walks up, calms everyone down and begins making his report.

The two academics offer their services as witnesses. The policeman says, "fine, go ahead." The semantics fellow talks about the words exchanged, looking at nuances of meaning and goes into some detail about the etymologies, and how they related to Gaelic Irish and Latin and Italian, and the possible shades of meaning that can be construed by the parties. The semiotician says, "well, yes, that is all true, but if we look at the gestures, even the choices of clothing, the care given to the cars, we can find evidence contraindicating the purely verbal exchange. For instance, when the Italian fellow said "figlio d'un puttana," he had his third and fourth fingers pointing to his own heart, a gesture we find in the third altarpiece of the Church of San Lorenzo in the village of Pienza, painted by an anonymous master of the 16th Century. Now, we know that the visual language of that time and that place were heavily influenced by late Byzantine visual language, so we look for a similar gesture in Ravenna, where we find one in the mosaics outside the restroom of the Orthodox Baptistry. Sure enough, the gesture belongs to Judas, so we have to take the later Tuscan gesture to have at least some degree of self-condemnation. When our Italian here was doing this as he said, "figlio d'un puttana" he was pointing the blame at himself. That the Irishman said, "sod it you git" was his own blatant misinterpretation of the cultural norm. I would say that the Irishman completele provoked the fisticuffs."

At this the semantician said, "well, that may be, and for the Irishman to have used such an Anglo Saxon term and in that context would imply that he was suggesting that the Italian perform immoral acts with his mother, prostitute that she may be..."

At this neither the Irishman, the Italian, nor the cop could take much more, and they got together and said, "this is crazy! Neither of them knows of this 16th Century altarpiece or any of this. How can you claim that they are some encyclopaedias?"

"Ah," said the semiotician, "but we see this gesture used in every single Fellini movie, every episode of Mike Buongiorno's show, even in political discourse. He would not have to know the exact origin, I just used that to use a precise example to clarify what it meant. He absorbed the meaning of the gesture every day in his upbringing."

So the cop agreed, and fined the Irishman for starting the fight.

Now it so happened that there was another semiotician lurking nearby, one who had made a thorough study of early Irish manuscripts. He stepped in and said, "now, this is entirely unfair. As you transalpines might not know, this gesture is found all over the Book of Kells to signify hostile intent. Padraig O'Fircthmornngnihm, an eighth century priest, brought over a copy of the Ravenna mosaic, but was confused as to who was making the gesture, and interpreted it as an early form of flipping the bird. You will find twelve references to it in Finnegan's Wake, and Malachy McCourt used it on the Tonight Show twenty years ago."

The cop was thoroughly confused. "But I thought you guys were supposed to bring out the hidden meanings of things! You are just making it all more complex.

"No, we aren't," said the first semiotician. "You are understanding more and more about the subtle layers of discourse. The problem is that it is a complex situation. Now, you could take all this complexity and become paralyzed, but that is to get so wrapped up in minutiae that you forget that a fight broke out and an immediate solution is called for (this is basically what certain French cultural theorists do on purpose - show the extreme cases of difficulty and claim that those cases prove the impossibility of any coherence anywhere, but, in spite of looking cool in berets and smoking Galoises and being hip, they are completely wrong). That is why when you are off duty you should pick up "Interpretation and Overinterpretation" by Umberto Eco. We have pointed out possible layers of meaning, but you have to look at the roles of the authors of these gestures as well. We call that the intentio auctoris, and that is what your job is to find out. Were these words and gestures 'fighting words' or not?"

The cop thinks for a moment and says, "but surely you are not saying that these men are just slaves to the flow of language."

"No, not at all!" says the semiotician. "We are all Catholics here. We believe in free will. It is just that in using language we are wielding a powerful tool, that comes with a lot of extras loaded on."

"OK, I buy that," the cop says, "but it would really seem that this is not super useful here. Now, when I am looking for relations between Giotto and Dante, I can see how this would help me, because a slight variant on a speech might drasticly change the theological tone of the Divine Comedy, but here..."

"Not only is language a powerful tool, but so is semiotics. It would seem that you are perhaps using the wrong tool by calling our expertise up."

"But you offered your services," the cop interrupted, testily.

"Well, yes, but your job as reader is to apply the right tool to the right job. We talk about the intentio lectoris, the intent of the reader, in this case the empirical reader, namely you. We offered our tools, but it is your job to decide if our tools are the correct ones. We might think that the case calls for it, but we are implying an intentio lectoris that can be called the intent of the model reader."

Realizing that his colleague was putting his foot in it, the second semiotician suggested, "well, we are really delving into metalanguage here. The reader of the sign would have to be the Irishman. The policeman, us, we are doing a metareadinn of the sign. If we are looking for intentio lectoris, it must be on the part of the Irishman."

This went on late into the night, although they moved it to a cafe. At the end they decided to let bygones be bygones and start a symposium on the use of gesture in a cross--cultural context, focusing on late Byzantine art and the Book of Kells.

I hope that makes it as clear as Guiness or espresso!

Sample Ballot.

Today our sample ballot arrived. You should see all the names. I have decided to support the recall. The only problem I had was the precedent it sets, but I think that the precedent was set once the thing qualified. As for people to apply it to, I can't think of a better candidate than Gray Davis. I think at this point I would rather have had Feinstein as governor, and I do not like Feinstein.

Hey Hey Ho Ho Gray Davis has got to Go!

I was going to write more about the California situation, but now I have to study the ballot. There are some interesting names on this thing.

Semiotics

Semiotics versus General Semantics

Alicia asked the very good question of what is the difference between semiotics and general semantics. As is the nature of those who spend way too much time studying language, I am sure that Steven and I could go on for pages, but Alicia was wise and put a limit on the discussion.

Part of the problem is that semiotics is a fairly new branch of linguistics, and as a result the boundaries are not as defined as older disciplines. The ambiguity of boundary is further complicated by the trend for academics to claim as much material as possible in their particular fiefdoms.

Basically Semantics is concerned with words and the signifier-signified relationships inherent in them. Semiotics is concerned with, in the words of Umberto Eco, “a unified approach to every phenomenon of signification and/or communication.” (Eco, Umberto. A Theory of Semiotics. Indiana University Press, Indiana, 1976. p. 3). Since it could get terribly out of hand, Eco sets some practical limits. As he says in the same work, “The common objection to the ‘imperialist’ semiotician is: well, if you define a peanut as a sign, obviously semiotics is concerned with peanut butter as well – but isn’t this procedure a little unfair? What I shall demonstrate in this book, basing myself on a highly reliable philosophical and semiotical tradition, is that – semiotically speaking – there is not a substantial difference between peanuts and peanut butter, on the one hand, and th words /peanuts/ and /peanut butter/on the other. Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign.”

And this is part of my interest in semiotics. What if we are to take the natural world as signs of God’s creation as well as as creation itself (the way we accept the Eucharist as symbol of as well as the Real Presence of the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ). It gets very interesting to think of creation as a complex network of signs laid out by God to aid us in our salvation.

Of course Eco would not approve! He would have some good reasons not to, but I submit that it is more than fair ball to take this approach.

So, Alicia, I hope that clarifies. If anyone finds any howlers in that, holler, and I will try to correct them. It is, after all, late, and I am feeling the effects of a large bison burger with lovage and garlic (not to mention the wine to go with it).

Roma.

Matthew of the Shrine of the Holy Whapping is in Rome and is posting regularly. Whenever I read of Rome or see pictures of its churches, ruins, parks, shops, etc. I get a little bit sad, because I am not in Rome (even if I happen to be in San Francisco, which is the only other city that has that effect on me). I have family in Rome, even though we are not Romans (I have to admit that the Romanacci accent sounds a little silly to me, why can't they speak the language of Dante like the rest of us? OK, Pisano is not exactly Florentine, but it is closer than Romanacci). I don't even have a particular fondness for Roman food, finding it vastly inferior to our great Tuscan cuisine or that of the Umbrians.

But there is just something about Rome. It is an amazing city, one that, like Mexicali, sprawls all over the landscape, completely without a focal point. Just sprawling around and over the seven hills like a benevolent fog. Of course a fog is just what one wants in July or August when Rome is intolerable: hot, crowded, grimy, noisy. Hmm. Sounds good when I put it like that.

Rome is not a culinary city. Not only is their cuisine a second-tier Italian cuisine, you have to have either a friend or a very good eye for a good restaurant to find the ones that are worth going to. Its markets are not as good as others (I certainly don't know all of them, though), although one can find great gelato and bakeries in Rome.

I do not think that Rome is an easy city to like (it shares this trait with Mexicali. I bet you are all getting intrigued about Mexicali now. Another neat city but not really in the same league as Rome), but when it clicks, it is great.

Anyway, it will be fun enjoying the Eternal City vicariously through Matthew's posts!

Three Cheers for Kazan!

Let's get something very clear. If I suspect you of being a Communist, and there ever is a government agency that is doing its job and keeping track of Communists, then I will supply your name to said agency. Don't go whining "betrayal!" I think that the hype over the supposed victims of the Red Scare is outlandish. What, some writer who thought Stalin was swell had to use a nome de plume to collect a princely sum for writing a screenplay? My eyes are supposed to get moist over that? Or someone was asked to come into an office to answer a few questions? That is persecution?

Uh-oh, I am going to hear from my father about that last one. You see, he was indeed asked to come into an office to answer a few questions, and, guess what? He was indeed a pinko. If I had been in charge of the army, I'd probably have thrown him in the brig in that era. He was at an army base that had a notorious and well-publicized problem of Communist infiltration, and he had been spending a lot of time with known subversives.

The amazing thing is that now he is no longer a pinko. I am not saying that the investigation made him see the light, but perhaps it began to nourish the seeds of doubt. However, in spite of the absolute and unqualified gratitude that he should show towards HUAC, he still has these funny ideas that it was somehow wrong.

If you ever meet him you should make him tell you the story, because it is priceless: the army handled the investigation with all of the ham-fisted antics in the book (e.g. on the way to the interrogation they passed through a room of brass who immediately stopped talking). Stuff that inspires me greatly as I plan my dictatorship in my demented little mind. Of course my models are more Latin, but there is something charming about American military brusqueness.

But anyway, that is his story, and if you meet him have him tell it to you, since it is interesting. When he is done you can ask him what sort of beliefs his friends had and what sort of ideas were being bandied about in the publication whose list was subpeonaed. I know these leftist friends and they are charming people, once you get beyond the admiration for Stalin, and I have been on mailing lists that probably should have been brought to the FBI's attention, so I am not advocating torture for people who flirt with goofy ideas. Just a few questions in a quiet office now and then. Just to make them think and to discourage them from acting rashly.

The main point of this is that I was doing my required reading of the entertainment press. Obviously a label that puts stuff out like this is not going to be regularly featured in Entertainment Weekly or Us Weekly, but these publications do hire real writers who occasionally sneak a good record review in, and it is important for me to know something of what is going on in the general music world.

Now I have learned from reading this crap that "courage" is a euphemism for giving absolute assent to anything Brbra Streisand says, especially in matters of sexual perversion or stating the bleeding obvious and linking it to the patently false: AIDS causes suffering, therefore homosex should be celebrated. Are these people serious?

Speaking of serious, I have had more and more trouble discerning serious garbage from the parodies. Is Jewel intentionally funny? How about Fischerspooner? Has anyone heard of Fischerspooner? It must be a joke, no? I have also learned that Cher is looking more and more like a charicature of a warped Barbie doll by the minute. But the catalogue of what I have learned from fluff journalism is not really what I want to get into right now, rather my hero, the brilliant director and front line liuetenant in the war against Communist infiltration in Hollywood, Elias Kazan.

There was a surprisingly balanced little bit about Kazan. Usually he is portrayed as the bad guy who sold his friends up the river just because they cared about society. You know, Robeson suffered so that Kazan didn’t have to.

I say "hogwash!" These Hollywood Communists were vehement, nasty Stalinists, many taking direction from Moscow, looking to push Communist ideology into the films. The emphasis has shifted, but it is still the same thing. Now it is the free-love side of things that gets pushed, and since the major corporations are more than happy to make a buck off of it, the Dempublican government will do nothing about it. But whether it is free sodomy or Commie chains, does anyone doubt that the left has been using Hollywood to further its agenda for the last 50 years?

Do these people extolling the virtues of the hammy actor and cornball singer Robeson not care about how bad Stalin was or do they not know? This should clear up any questions.

As far as I am concerned one of the only figures in Hollywood to show true courage (and not in the modern "oh, George Michael showed a lot of courage last night when he said that AIDS was bad and he should be allowed to marry Elton" sense of the word) was Elias Kazan. He knew that there were active Communists planning to use Hollywood to promote their agenda, and he did the right thing.

These liberals would be better off shedding tears for Itzhak Pfeffer, the poet who was betrayed to death by Paul Robeson (you can read Robeson’s boy’s whitewash here), rather than for some folk-revivalist who had to play to audiences of thousands rather than tens of thousands because he thought Stalin was just OK.

Kazan did his duty to humanity and to our culture. Would that Hollywood had a hundred Elias Kazans! He was a fine director, too.

Grappa

I should probably discuss grappa (plural is grappe) in general terms first. Oh well, it will have to come second. As it is virtually unknown among non-Italians and much maligned, let me offer an introduction to it.

Grappa is grape brandy (more or less, but that will suffice for a definition here). Generally it is unaged and clear, although sometimes you will encounter amber-colored grappa aged in oak. I prefer the unaged clear stuff, so I will primarily discuss that. If you are in France it will be called Marc.

Grappa varies considerably in quality. Some of it tastes like a cross between gasoline and rocket fuel, and some of it is a complex explosion of flavors: floral, fruit, spice. It is always strong and is not to everyone's taste. Unless it is used as the base for a liquer it is bone dry with no residual sugar. Due to its potency, like other brandies grappa is "tasted" by pouring a small amount on the taster's hand, rubbed and smelled. Otherwise a taster would maybe get to do three intelligent tastes in a session and have to call it quits.

I have seen grappa made out of chardonney, pinot noir, malvasia, moscato, zinfandel, sangiovese, sauvignon blanc, cabernet sauvignon, prosecco, concord grapes, and others. Different grapes impart different flavors to the stuff.

Grappa is generally served in two contexts: as an after dinner digestivo or in caffè corretto, or corrected coffee. Sometimes it is served with a shot of espresso, sometime the two are mixed. Grappa is often served in what looks like a tall shot glass, but there are stemmed glasses with flared bowls (sort of an exaggerated tulip) that are quite good for drinking grappa (Riedel makes them, natch). Grappa should be sipped and savored. One should never quaff grappa (or anything else) to get drunk, although if your judgement slips and you do overindulge, a grappa hangover is not as gentle as a true tequila hangover, but not as ugly as a cognac hangover. Some folks dip their cantucci in grappa, but I am a strict vin santo cantucci dipper.

The Veneto region leads Italy in grappa consumption, as well as in UFO sightings. I am not drawing any conclusions, but you may, if you wish. Some of the best grappe are homemade and completely unavailable except from the proud farmer who will pour you a glass of it just to see his grappa appreciated. If you encounter a farmer like that, you will never want to leave Italy, because the chances are that you will be invited to lunch, and have just about the best meal you ever had, and met some great people, etc.

Recommending grappe is as difficult as recommending single malt scotches. Some folks like one set of traits, others like others. For a good, starting bottle, the Clear Creek distillery in Oregon makes a fine grappa (as well as a great Williams Pear eau-de-vie), as does Bonny Doon vineyard in California. Of the Italian brands I like a whole bunch, but have been drinking Nardini recently to great satisfaction. Inga makes some decent grappe, and Grappa Julia, which is found in just about any Italian restaurant, is a bit rough, but not altogether unpleasant. You have to realize that I have a fondness for some of the rougher grappe, though.

Other than that, it would be easier for me to make recommendations if you tell me one you like, and I can think of something similar. Or if you are thinking about buying one and would like to know if it is rotgut or decent, I will be happy to tell you.

You may also encounter grappe with herbs in them: rue is a common addition. I like them for variety, but generally stick with the straight stuff. One exception is technically a liquer, because it has been sweetened, but is a favorite of ours (Melanie is especially fond of it) is chamomile grappa. You can buy it, although it is expensive, or you can make it by steeping chamomile blossoms in a decent grappa, filtering it, sweetening it, bottling it and letting it sit for a few months. However, before you do that, you should taste either the commercial variety or mine, so you get an idea of how sweet to make it and what flavor profiles to look for. So, next time you are in the Bay Area, holler!

Orrechiette with mushroom sauce

This is one of my favorite types of pasta recipes: you can create an amazingly rich and elegant dish all in the time it takes to boil your water and cook your pasta.

So, put on your water to boil. When it gets to a rolling boil, stop what you are doing at a convenient moment, salt the water and add the orrechiette (thumb prints, known as little ears or sometimes priests' ears). Stir to keep from sticking together (never, ever, under fear of eternal Hellfire, add oil of any sort to your pasta while it is cooking). When the pasta is not quite al dente, remove it, drain it and finish cooking it in the sauce in the skillet.

Thinly slice whatever strongly flavored mushroom you want to use. I recommend mastutake, but fresh porcini or chantrelle are good, and even brown crimini are fine (but add some reconstituted dried porcini to give it some oomph).

Finely dice two cloves of garlic.

Finely chop either a generous pinch of fresh calamint or fresh thyme.

Warm olive oil in a saute pan.

Add the mushrooms, calamint and garlic and fry gently.

Deglaze your pan with a generous splash of grappa.

Cook the alcohol out.

Add a generous splash of heavy cream and grate parmeggiana reggiano over it.

Finish with freshly ground nutmeg, finely chopped parsley, freshly cracked pepper and a very light drizzle of black truffle oil.

I probably have posted this already, as it is my favorite autumn pasta (second to a true bolognese, made with Tuscan ragu, of course). Serve with a minerally white wine or a crisp red.

Some fun!

First we have some fun! Three things culled from the Search Engine results that have led people to Erik's Rants and Recipes:

"chewing gum can give diseases to chewer" Indeed it probably can. It certainly can make the chewer look like an utter and complete imbecile, especially when done while wearing a sideways baseball cap.

"share recipes illegal" Uh-oh, it looks like the RIAA is teaming up with the Beard Foundation. Watch out.

On the topic of sharing recipes:

"recipes using grappa" Bravo, my friend! You have come to the right place. That will be the theme for the week, foodwise (as to the Where Erik Stands On series, we are about to embark on the grim task of California politics).

Cinema Paradiso

Last night we watched the recent recut Cinema Paradiso. The original theatrical release is one of my all-time favorite films, so I was particularly eager to see the added footage. Well, I can't say that it is an improvement. I guess if it is more material and not an improvement it must necessarily be a flaw. I guess. Since the DVD comes with both the original and the added footage versions, I will be going back to the original this week and comparing. Do any of y'all out there have any opinions on this? I need to see the original again before I really comment, but it just seemed unecessary, based on my memories of the film.

One thing that strikes me every time I have seen the film (and many other films as well) is how great an actor Noiret is. I was also struck, for the first time, that Morricone was not at his best in this film. The music just didn't have that great Morricone spark that a lot (but certainly not all) of his scores have. I guess I never noticed the music much before, but I paid attention to it last night.

One upped by Mr. Riddle!

Mr. Riddle of Flos Carmeli, has one-upped me in his blog theory. While I gave posts that dealt with the mechanics of the blog itself the category "Housekeeping" Mr. Riddle has come up with "metablogging." Brilliant! The irony is that I am a big fan of semiotics, which relies heavily on the concept of metalanguage, and, I believe, Mr. Riddle is not one to jump on the Barthes, Eco, Culler bandwagon.

By the way, his new site looks great, and his writing has been really good (even though he has written positively about the original bourgeouis bohemian - the suburban hermit and proto-hippy Thoreau) and especially worth reading these days (it is always good, but has been a little extra good in recent weeks).

Inferno!

Friday Five

1. What housekeeping chore(s) do you hate doing the most?

Mopping. It always seems that as soon as I mop I have to urgently go through the mopped area, usually after I have to get something out of the yard. Then I have to do it again.

2. Are there any that you like or don't mind doing?

Once I get into it, washing dishes is fun. I like playing in the water. Otherwise I like filing books and records. I get into the taxonomy of it and it can be a very enjoyable task, especially when I decide to re-classify something, for instance, to group our CD library by nationality as opposed to by chronology. Sometimes I will re-classify in order to take subtle and not-so-subtle digs at an artist or writer: take that Ambrose Bierce, I am moving you from California literature to American Literature! That will teach you to not leave the Golden State! Ha HA HA! Look at Emerson, hanging out with the hippies!!! Emerson is a hippy! Emerson is a hippy! Hanging out next to Leary! Hippy, hippy, hippy!

Melanie gets particularly annoyed at my various schemes at taxonomy because she will often just get used to one system, and I'll get the bug in my ear to change it around and invent a new one. She also gets annoyed when I file the Indigent Girls in some section that is clearly intended as an insult, for instance the Entartete Kultur section.

3. Do you have a routine throughout the week or just clean as it's needed?

Theoretically as needed.

4. Do you have any odd cleaning/housekeeping quirks or rules?

I like to wash a dish completely, rinse it, dry it and put it away before starting the next piece. Drives everyone crazy, but it is the proper way to do it, as it avoids unsightly water marks and reduces the risk of breakage, since there is no longer an area full of wet glasses just waiting to be knocked over.

5. What was the last thing you cleaned?

Espresso machine. It needed it.

Art Reflections Part III

More Art Reflections.

In my brief outline of my own basic views on art, as well as discussions with Matthew of the Shrine of the Holy Whapping, I realize that an important issue must be dealt with: the relationship of objective beauty to individual taste. Certainly de gustibus non disputandem est. There is no point in arguing over whether or not it is correct to like the color orange, or the smell of skunks, or even to prefer Wagner to Scarlatti (God forbid!).

The problem comes in modern society, when the proper understanding of beauty is neglected and confounded with taste. The problem probably started when taste became a badge of class, and I will not be so foolish as to suggest a single time for that. I do know from studying the history of food, that there have been class-based food fads going way back. For awhile the nobility (and emerging bourgeoisie) shunned aromatic herbs, because that was how the peasants flavored their food. Then, the craze for spice was seen as incredibly nouveau, so spices were almost completely abandoned in savory dishes in favor of thyme, savory, marjoram, etc.

Once taste was linked to social standing, it became an imposed thing. Don’t like cardamom in your meatballs? Tough, cause that’s what the proper people are doing. Sage is vulgar. Naturally one cannot back up such an imposition of taste simply by resorting to whim, so a theoretical justification was sought after, and the ancients had already done some great work in aesthetics, so why not just borrow that? The result was a rigid and often erroneous use of the language of beauty to describe taste.

With all of the other errors of philosophical Liberalism and naturalistic philosophies came the outlandish notion of self-reliance in all matters. It was no longer acceptable to ignore one’s own taste if society called it ugly. But degeneracy takes awhile, so it was about 100 or so years before it really hit the fan, and some people noticed that official taste was often rather ugly. Now the obvious and correct way to attack official ugly taste is to resort to appeals to eternal beauty, but Liberalism was too prevalent, so the battle was fought in the arena of the dialectic of power. False tastes were imposed, but the basic human urge towards the Good recognized the hypocrisy. This reaction of our better natures was exploited by the Liberal cult of the individual, and the results were tragic.

No longer could you say that my taste was bad, nor that anything was objectively ugly. From “To each his own” to “Hey man, it’s all good.”

In the middle of this turmoil (which was necessary to break the iron fist of official taste, particularly when official taste reached the various ever-sinking nadirs it has hit) were a lot of artists, poets, musicians, sculptors, and architects who clung or grasped or blindly whacked around for the eternal. Some were better than others, some were even quite amazing, some failed, and some managed to achieve extreme beauty and extreme ugliness in practically the same breath. And that is the story of art in our culture for the past 200 years!

Now that the notion of the avant-garde has played itself out except in the minds of the dim-bulbs who curate most museums and probably some high school artist in Sacramento who has the idea that Van Gogh and Matisse are somehow controversial in the greater art world (I really did see the battles of 100 years before me as still being fought), we must make an important distinction between the appreciation of the Good and the True and the Beautiful and taste.

I am going to discuss an artist who I admire as a painter, yet loathe: Francis Bacon. I have not only studied many reproductions, but have spent considerable time face to face with his work. It is an experience.

The folksinger Leo Kottke, who is known for telling funny yarns in between his fantastic guitar work, tells a story on one of his live albums about looking through his father’s (who was in the Army Medical Corps) books on jungle diseases. “A book of jungle diseases is like pornography. The more you look the sicker you get, but you can’t help yourself,” says Kottke.

At the last retrospective of Bacon, I sort of understood. I was captivated by his paint handling, his control of color, his tightly constructed compositions. Basically, I had to give him credit: Francis Bacon could paint well. His figures betrayed a good hand with the pen as well. Yet there is something that really repulsed me from his work. I don’t think that it is the content, because I have no problem with looking at decay and the grotesque and macabre. I have to just chalk it up to taste, although there is something to talk about in our discussion of content when a piece of art repulses at the same time that it draws us in (we will deal with that in the next installment).

This is where it gets tricky: to recognize that I do not like an artist, although logically I realize that he was a good artist. As much as it boggles my mind, it is possible that there are people out there who can recognize that Richard Diebenkorn was a great painter and not like his work. I feel sorry for these poor souls, but we have to make allowances for that in our discussions of art.

I do believe that we are on the verge of a great era of Western art (or the complete collapse of civilization, although I tend to be an optimist), and I believe that part of this new springtime will be a flowering of figurative art (although non-figurative art is not necessarily modern, and will always be with us). However, many of the folks who are promoting “returns to sanity” and the such really seem to be arguing for a return to the imposition of taste. They argue, as I mentioned in the previous post, against the theories that were fashionable, rather than against the work itself, which they have not taken the time to really see. Their groupings of disparate painters, following the groupings of the various theorists of New York betrays them.

I admit that I do not always keep taste and aesthetics apart. I also admit that I share the weakness that many do in liking the occasional bad piece (no names, but there are a few pop artists that I like in spite of their general lack of anything really beautiful – liking garbage is a consequence of original sin, by the way, but we must leave that for later discussion). However, we must always struggle to make this distinction and should probably work to conform our taste to what we know is good from the intellect. But we must be honest with ourselves, otherwise we will end up with the old taste imposition, which is how we got to the problem to begin with.

Something to read and listen to...

I went to the Rootsworld site to look for a review, and found that one I had written a while back is featured. Since I have posted few reviews recently, I offer this for your reading pleasure.

I might have to let you down this evening. Sorry.

I was going to write more about my views of art, so that the art part of "Where I Stand" can be wrapped up this weekend. It will still be wrapped up this weekend, since I have covered the basics (I am just presenting a basic outline of what I think, I am not trying to publish my Grand Manifesto on Visual Arts - just to clear things up, which will be most important when I get to politics, as I need to make a couple of things very clear), so if worse comes to worse, I can just stop and move on to "Where I Stand on Film" or Music or "Where I Stand When I Am Stomping Nasty San Francisco Sourdough Bread Into The Compost Bin. Yuck That Stuff Is Foul!"

The reason I may not get into the world of content in art is that I have a DVD of 8 1/2 that I have not had a chance to watch. Since Melanie is going to a play with a friend (I would holler unfair, but Melanie did not make it to a single SF Symphony last year in our series), once I put Amália to bed I might just want to watch one of my favorite films. Or maybe not. Just don't get pissy if I don't write anything tonight. I do want to draw a connection between Holiness and Baroque performance practice, but that should probably come with "Where I Stand on Music."

I also realize that if I don't post a recipe, Ann might get grumpy. Since Ann does the design and html and understands how to Syndicate the site and all of this mysterious stuff, I have to appease her. So, I will post some late summer recipe soon. I have been doing a lot of cooking: tomatoes, capsicum, basil, freestone peaches, figs, basically all of my favorites besides Bing Cherries and Apricots. When the weather takes a turn for the colder and I grill more and drink more robust wines, then I will be extra happy!

Where I stand on art, part II

Where I stand on art in relation to society.

There are two issues that involve art and public policy. The first is the role of regulation by the government of art. The second is the role of the government to fund art. I am an anti-Libertarian in both regards, as I see it as an essential duty of the state to promote the public good by restricting art in both the public and the private sphere. In the private sphere subsidiarity demands that the government not excessively regulate what a man chooses to see behind closed doors, but the government has a compelling interest in trade, and must first and foremost regulate or see to the professional regulation of craft standards. An art litho must be in conformance to the accepted standards of art lithography: the artist must have worked the image himself, without recourse to photochemical means, the run must conform to the stated number, plus a reasonable number of artist’s and printer’s proofs, the stone (or plate) must be effaced and an effacement print made, etc. There is a lot of technical knowledge as to what constitutes an art litho, and the term is abused by the unscrupulous. Many times I see posters that were offset printed from photochemical plates, unsigned, un-numbered, yet called “art prints” or “art lithos.” To protect the consumer, this should be regulated.

Beyond certifying the veracity of the materials and processes, the regulation of art in the private sphere should mainly be concerned with outlawing only pornography or the patently blasphemous. Art in the public sphere, on the other hand, must be held to stricter standards. Contrary to mainstream public opinion, I believe that the local ordinary should have the power to at least restrict viewing of certain paintings, films, sculptures, etc. to adult audiences. The state’s role is to enforce his decision. If something is really bad, then let it be cast out of the public sphere altogether.

Obviously one will notice that I see the state and the Church working hand in hand to promote the public good. Obviously this gives you some idea of where I stand on politics! But that is for another entry on another day, when we will discuss syndicalism, Falangismo and Francisco Franco y Bahamonde. Meanwhile we will stick to art policy.

Part of the Church and state working together is the use of the Church tax as well as the young people in their national service term to work towards grand, publicly funded art in the form of Cathedrals, public sculpture, etc. Even in our debased secular era, even in the absence of my long awaited Catholic dictatorship, I believe strongly in the public funding of the arts. There has never been a time when the arts were not publicly funded. The nature of the state changed, but the patronage has always been from the taxes paid by the people (or the tithes).

Very little of what the NEA has funded has been complete garbage. Most of what they have done has been excellent. The NEA has brought art to crappy little burgs, I mean, uh, humble little towns that would otherwise have been completely devoid of higher culture. The NEA has funded some of the greatest achievements of the American performing arts, the preservation of many traditional arts, the education of countless children in at least the seeds of artistic contemplation.

Of course the best example of public funding of the arts is probably the US Army band. Countless jazz musicians honed their chops and learned terrific discipline as a result of their stints in the Army band. This is not to slight the Navy. On the contrary, I remember at the Stanford Jazz Workshop we had some Navy guys who were all around great musicians, and really good guys as well. I am sure the Marines and Air Force provide this service as well.

I am a big supporter of bands, and believe that every town of over 100 people has a duty to support a municipal band. The level of support could be nothing more than providing uniforms and a bandstand in the park, or it could be full-time salaries with benefits depending on the city. I am often saddened to see beautiful bandstands in parks that are neglected. The bands could do a lot to promote the civic identity of a place, too. Towns could stick to the Sousa basics or venture into Nino Rota arrangements or whatever, depending on the tastes of the town. I consider this a practical blueprint for society as it stands. It would be an easy, educational, and completely beneficial program for a town to sponsor a municipal band. Towns with a rich heritage of musicianship could even have competing neighborhood bands, the cream of which form the City Municipal Band. I guarantee you that a public band program would lower juvenile delinquency (otherwise, there’s trouble, right here in River City!).

I also believe that every parish should have a band for processions. I think that it is a disgrace how we have neglected these magnificent public displays of the Faith. Haydn and other composers have even written masses for wind bands. It is time to give these works a dusting off, and to bring back this tradition to our churches.

So, in addition to what was posted below, we have the following:

1. Keilholtz believes in regulating art to ban pornography and blasphemy.
2. Keilholtz believes in public funding of art
3. Keilholtz admires the military band tradition
4. Keilholtz has some funny idea that there should be municipal bands raising a ruckus in our parks on the weekends
5. Keilholtz wants Catholics to march around, raising a ruckus on Holy Days.

Now, on to more unfinished business. I spoke against the formulaic versus the experimental in art. Jeff rightfully questioned what I meant, figuring that I was not for anarchy. He is right. I do not advocate anarchy, but rather see good foundations of rules and structures to be the only way of breaking free of formula.

I gave a couple of hasty examples in the comments box, but let me offer them again, with some more detail.

Example One. I freely go at a canvas. I used the Jackson Pollock imitation model earlier, so now I will use the Thomas Hart Benton model. I do not base my work on “rigid” classical rules of composition, color, line, etc. Rather I go with the flow, painting objects and people undulating against each other. What will almost inevitably happen is formula. I will seize upon something and repeat it over and over and over. When I start a painting, it will become an exercise in doing it again. A painting will come out exactly as it was supposed to. There is no room for anything but me here!

If, instead, I work based on classical norms of composition, or within a structural system I have developed over time, with a lot of careful introspection and contemplation, the chances are much better that I will be surprised by some beauty in the painting that I did not predict. Often it will mean taking a calculated risk, but often the discipline comes from subjecting the art to the rules and using veto powers over the whim.

If I degenerate to formula, whether completely abstract or more realistic, I will end up with the painting I started with. Dead. Dull. Crank it out and get on with another one. It is the deadliest trap of modern art, avoiding the formulaic. OK. Enlarge a poloroid photo of the subject here. Silkscreen it with some outlandish color choices. OK, repeat it. Presto! Sign it and on to the next one! Yawn. The formulaic is the choosing of the facile over the long careful look. The formulaic is in self-imitation. The formulaic is in good craftsmanship married to poor ideas. Keanes, Kinkade, Koons are the most egregious after Warhol. Norman Rockwell verged on the formulaic but saved himself as an illustrator (just don’t call him a painter!). In milder cases the fomulaic results in bland, unoffensive but unremarkable art: Wyeth comes immediately to mind. You look at his work and get the idea that he could have put it together in his sleep, without a model, without thought.

Picasso could dip into the territory, and his worst work smacks of formula. After all, Pablo was a great commodity. Demand had to be met! However, simply because Picasso was such an able draftsman and a keen observer, even the paintings he threw together at the last minute had something going for them. A good idea becomes formula when the artist does the painting without thinking about it. Nathan Oliveira turned a great idea into a formula out of laziness. So did Georgia O’Keefe.

Not all repetition of idea is formulaic, though. Manuel Neri and Robert Ryman were able to do many works that differed from each other only slightly in basic idea, yet managed to carve out their own space. I particularly like Ryman, by the way, but absolutely do not recommend him in reproduction. You must not only see his work in person (preferably a whole room of it, like SFMOMA used to have), but need to take a long look at each piece. He remains one of my favorite painters.

Example Two. I offered the example of playing a baroque piece on the harpsichord. I can sit down and play through a Bach suite without much thought to performance practice and make a credible performance. It will be with a lot of feeling and expression and all of that. However, if I do not take the piece for granted, and instead study it with an eye towards historical performance practice, and theoretical analysis, I can end up with a much more interesting performance, one that even surprises me as a performer.

You want formulaic baroque? Sir Neville Marriner and the lumberjacks of St. Martin in the Fields. They can saw through Bach with the best of them, and they are all good musicians, so it will work, but listen to Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music doing the same piece. The contrast will be striking. One will be utterly predictable. You will know when the melody is going to turn, even if you have never heard the piece before, simply because they play firmly within our current cultural expectations.

Hogwood, on the other hand, will have the humility to approach the piece as an alien, to investigate and poke and prod with the greatest of intellectual vigor. None of this is to suggest that a historically informed performance jettison expression and feeling. On the contrary, a historically informed performance DEMANDS those things. It is through the discipline of study that we can tap into the music that is there rather than try to force the composition to yield to our own wills.

And finally, this brings us to some painters I neglected to mention in my list of favorites/influences:

Vermeer, Degas, Vuillard, Hodgkins, Terry St. John, Gustave Dore, Beardsley, Ruskin (more about him later, in his role as a critic), Whistler (had to put them together on the list), Marion Cavenaugh Wachtel, Maynard Dixon, Hassel Smith, Xavier Martinez, Bierstadt, Church, Constable, Turner, Klimt, the Brueghels, Kandinsky, Klee, Hans Hoffman, e&.

I have gone on too long to get into content of art, so that will have to wait another day!

Not a lot of time at lunch today.

I want to make some corrections to the last big post, but will not have the time to do so until late tonight. I did not bring a lunch, so I have to go to the deli down the road. So, please realize that I did not get into the role of art in society, except for a couple of jabs against agitprop, I did not discuss content in art, which is a serious omission, and I omitted some important painters from the list.

Also, Jeff pointed out in the comments that I did not really explain what I mean by the formulaic. I tried a feeble explanation in the box, but it demands more than that. So, please read the last post with these caveats (also, I counted a couple of usage and spelling errors, which will be fixed).