This blog post by Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall sheds much light on ideas. Very interesting stuff, a number of pieces to the puzzle about where we came from and how the hands have guided us to this point.
http://stuartjeannebramhall.com/2014/08/10/the-earliest-recorded-direct-democracy/#comments
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Thursday, August 14, 2014
The New Novel
Remember those stories I told you? I turned
them into a novel. It almost killed me, but after we talked, I finally finished
the thing. I had a publisher ready to send a check and a bunch of free copies,
and I was like--After all that work, I’m going to sign away my baby for a few
thousand bucks? It’s true what they say about completing a book, it really is
like giving birth, and you really do think on it like a parent does a child.
Ironically or not, when I finished, I remember feeling like--I'm never doing
something stupid like that again! Seriously, writing a novel can kill you. I
mean a literary novel, one that tries to take the past, combine it with what’s
on the horizon, and make life relevant--that attempt to give meaning to us
little monkeys who are sometimes very warm, soft and furry inside, and other
times as cunning and deadly as all the teeth and claws that have ever torn
something apart. Anyone says writing a novel is not the most difficult thing to
do doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Anyone ever tells you they’re
working on a novel, be kind to them. And if you do write one, guess what? Even
though it will have been the hardest thing you ever do? It might go unnoticed.
Not too long ago humanity was on the cusp between real books and e-books. I
finished mine somewhere in that gap. What was funny in my case though is,
remember how I told you about when I was in my twenties and how I used to sell
those automotive booklets door to door in Los Angeles? Well, I found out I could sell copies of the novel
out on the street. I’d walk around with a backpack full, and by three or so in
the afternoon I had more for the day than if I was working for someone
else--and all in cash--or things I traded for, like food and beer. In fact, I
drove from Santa Barbara to the east coast and back one summer on my own
little book tour. I got lucky with a nice photo for the cover, and the woman
who did the interior design was a perfectionist, so it came out really good; a
true book art; a book that’s an object of art. And when people would ask what
it’s about I’d tell them it’s about a surfer in Malibu, Americana, rock and
roll, all that. It was pretty easy to sell. Anyway, I don’t want to get ahead
of myself because there’s a lot I want to tell you since all that other stuff.
I’ll start where we last left off, when we’re
in that bar on 52nd, and I was telling you about the actress. And how I went to
see her in a play, and how I told her she was my muse, and how she even agreed
to sit for a moment before her matinee performance the next day--to discuss
things that interested her--ideas for a play. And then how a year later, I went
to see her again and found out she was planning on spending the rest of her
life with someone else. And that’s what I was doing in the bar in the first
place, in misery about her. I left, went to the park, sat on a bench, and
started balling my head off. I thought I was going to be able to handle it,
tell myself it was OK, everything happens for a reason, there are plenty of
women out there--all that. But then I started thinking about all that lead up
to it, and how she really did inspire me to finish a novel and write my first
plays, and she really was my muse. I flashed to the day of sitting outside the
theatre with her, when she told me how much she loved the stage and how she
couldn’t live without it. And how even before that I had always liked it when
film actors commented in interviews or on late-night shows that they preferred
the stage--like they’re a certain breed of people, like wild horses or
something--and they need that fourth wall open to an audience, to range out
into, to deliver ideas, to move people to laugh or cry. And she’s Shakespearean
too, I flashed to her saying that playing Juliet at age twenty was one of the most
cherished memories of her life. She’s all that--my muse--and I just sat there,
all that going through my mind, interspersed with thoughts about how she’s now out
in the world with someone else--gone; how I’d never wake up with her in the
morning, walk hand in hand to rehearsals for the day--all that. That was the
life I was supposed to be living, and not only was it not happening, the
thought of creating anything new was like thinking about how to pick up the
Empire State building and move it somewhere else. I shuddered, and if the loss
of her was the loss of inspiration, was this really the end of my life as an
artist? And if this was the end of my life as an artist, would I be able to go
on? Would I actually be able to survive this? Was this was the beginning of the
end? I remembered the book about the artist/muse relationship and the stories
about artists who lost their muse some way or another, and how that was the end
of their life as an artist. They never wrote another poem, never picked up the
paint brush or the guitar again. This one French poet, who was also a
playwright, and who had gotten farther than me--who had written stuff for his
muse, her even starring in it--when he found out it wasn’t going to happen, he
just said, “I’m out of here,” and hung himself. I was thinking to myself,
like--Yeah man, you followed your heart, and now you just found out the truth,
and all that gold you mined, all the effort and steam of inspiration provided
by her--it was suddenly as meaningless as a bunch of ashes at my feet. Sitting
there, knowing she was somewhere else on the island, getting ready for a play,
and I was nowhere in mind--it was horrific. The grief came in waves and all
these thoughts and emotions combined in a moment and I must have passed out
because the next thing I know, there’s like three or four people crouched down
around me asking if I’m all right. The side of my face was even scraped and
bleeding from where I rolled off the bench and hit the bricks.
It was the worst way the sacred alliance of
artist/muse could end--or, not the worst--but one of the last steps toward the
worst. And I’m not using the word sacred
lightly, I mean we all thrive on the creativity arising out of the human
condition, right? Think about what life would be without art, if you woke up into
a Twilight Zone where you turned on your device and there was no music or
cartoons on it, and you went into town and there were no theatres, no galleries
or museums to wander through. Life without art is incomprehensible, like trying
to imagine surfing where Earth had no ocean. Of all human art--or a lot of it--in
order for it to come into existence, it requires inspiration just like tress
and flowers require water. The artist needs it and when they get it, that’s
when we end up saying things like--Wow, that’s an inspired piece of work!
And it doesn’t have to be art only, but
science too, because art and science are just two sides of the same coin, both
are built on what’s already become known. And inspiration doesn’t have to be huge
to be considered sacred, either, even if it’s as small as the inspiration from the
hot shift manager at the fast food place that gives the prep cook better care
in preparing a sandwich--someone who inspires someone else to excel, regardless
of the endeavor or task at hand--or inspires any thought, intention, or act
made towards creating a more beautiful world--it has to be sacred because
anything humans have ever considered sacred is part of the world, so any
striving to make it more enjoyable or understandable or both has to be sacred
too--right? Unless you’d rather be robot instead of human, then maybe the
artist/muse thing isn’t all that sacred.
Anyway, I got back to California with an abrasion on the side of my face, and the next
day a friend called. He was from the crew of surfers who used to walk parade
routes selling cotton candy, popcorn and sodas, back when we were all in our
twenties.
“Hey man, whaddaya have going right now?”
he asked.
“Not much, I just got back from spending
all my money on a trip to New York.”
“Oh cool, what took you out there?”
“There was a play I wanted to see.”
“You flew to New York to see a play?”
“There was an actress in a play that I
wanted to see.”
“You few out to New York to see an actress in a play? Nice! I guess that’s
good for me.”
“How’s that?”
“Because you’re broke and need
work--right?”
“Yeah, ok.”
“You know the Olympics are coming up soon,
right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” he said, “I just dropped a few
grand on some official Olympic merchandise.”
“You mean sell it to people going in and
out of the stadium?”
“No, a little more adventurous than that,”
he said. “You know how they light that huge flame at the beginning of the
games?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,
there’s a torch relay and that relay has a route.”
“You mean, sell stuff along the route?”
“It’s going to be full of people, just like
at a parade.”
The Olympic Flame commemorates when
Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. It represents the
light of spirit and knowledge, the pursuit of perfection, the struggle for
victory, and life itself. In ancient times it was lit from mirrors focusing rays
of the Sun at the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece. They do the same thing today except it’s in front
of the ruins of the temple, and it’s a modern parabolic mirror that ignites the
initial torch. The flame travels around Greece, and after a ceremony in Athens, it begins its journey to the host city. The relay
ends at the opening ceremony when the final torch-bearer runs up a staircase in
the arena and lights a huge cauldron to mark the start of the games.
The Olympic Torch Relay was going to be a
little over two months long and it was going through every state except Alaska and Hawaii. We had a passenger van. We took out the back two
seats for merchandise, and took off having no idea what to expect.
Each day the flame would head out of the
city it had stopped in the night before, meaning they would have a ceremony in
the morning where the first runner would light their torch and begin running
the route. The runner at the edge of the city would light a flame in a sculpted
bronze bowl on the back of a truck, where it would then go to another town or
city to begin another route. We called it the Torch Train, because all in all
it was a caravan of cars and vans. If you were waiting at the curb, the way it
appeared as it passed, was: first the corporate-sponsor trucks and cars handing
out sodas, and little plastic flags, passed by; then local cops blocking off
intersections; then the shuttle that dropped off runners; then some Olympic
Committee cars; then a small pack of motorcyclists who set the butane of a new
runner, then media vans and a truck with a platform for cameras; then the
runner with the flame; and finally the gaggle of support vehicles and locals.
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Email to two performers
Hello Rock Star, just heard the interview; you guys
are both great and I'm sure like most you have concerns about how things are
unfolding on Earth. As a social/political scientist I've been at the drawing
board and have developed an idea aimed to alter things in a positive manner. In
practice it's a peaceable reformation of the status quo, but the provision for
it has had confusing names applied to it, and so it's misunderstood. If you are
so moved please forward/discuss the following with star host:
Hello Star Host, I'm sure you've heard the term
"constitutional convention," have had conversation about it, and thus
have your own view on it. Most Americans understand it as an assembly of
politicians/lawyers rewriting the Constitution. And how could anyone not have
that view--the Constitution doesn't contain rules for a convention, so of
course in this day and age of big political money such an affair is nothing but
a giant risk. But in fact, because members of Congress and convention delegates
form a political class, they must be treated equally under the law. Article V
Delegates have no more/no less power than members of Congress (they can propose
ideas for change and/or vote on others, nothing more). If a member of Congress
suffers an election to attain this power of proposal/vote, so must the Article
V Delegate. In short, the Article V Convention is nothing more than a special
election for a unicameral, non-binding deliberative assembly. Whatever is
proposed by that assembly must then be ratified by 3/4 super-majority of the
states, a political principle making it mathematically impossible for partisan
ideas to become law (a proposal must get all one side of the political spectrum
signed on, plus at least half the other, or it fails). In the meantime, look at
what this political process of election/proposal/ratification does: it educates
an entire society in law/civics while offering solutions to problems faced (and
because American culture dominates the globe [Clapton recently lamenting such],
a change here means a change everywhere). Americans think we don't know what
will happen if we call a convention, but indeed we do know: 75% of the states
will agree to something or they won't. And of course because polls have been
trending for over a decade, the American desire to remove private funds from
public government, we can safely assume that any amendment with any hope of
being ratified must be non-partisan and concerned with electoral reform.
In terms of political science, the Congressional Research
Service issued, and has updated twice so far, a paper on the Article V
Convention. The paper informs members of Congress that in this social media day
and age, if the people want it, the Congress must call it. Congressional
Records show that over seven hundred applications from forty-nine states have
been cast and Congress has never counted them. Political action entered into
the Congressional Record last year made the request that Judiciary Committees
of both houses determine an official count. Once they begin to count they're
going to realize the states have satisfied the legal requirement for a
convention long ago. The request for Congress to count existing state
applications has not yet been acknowledged, which means we could hear about it
any time now, or the Congress will continue to do what it's always done: pretend
the applications don't exist.
In fact there is only one reason American society has
never gone through the constitutional process of a federal convention as
provided by the Constitution, because the people don't know what it is, and if
they don't want it, the Congress can ignore it. That's where you and [Rock Star] come
in: in this day and age of rock and roll and celebrity, rock and roll and
celebrity is all we need to create a tipping-point of consensus; and if
celebrities came together for a music tour of the states (based on the notion it's
time to find common ground, and until we do we're all stuck), it would create
the political awareness necessary for the Congress to finally issue the call.
From there, in a natural progression of events, all else will take care of
itself.
Congressional Research Service: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42592.pdf
It appears daunting, but actually, it would just be a
bunch of fun raising awareness, this right of the people to find common ground.
Sincerely,
John
805.708.1965
Monday, August 4, 2014
Poetry Reading
Ask ten people today, “You wanna go to a
poetry reading?” Eight and a half/nine--no thanks, no poetry reading.
Please go to this poetry reading? If you’ve never been to a poetry
reading, best way to approach it is as if you’re going to watch
an old guy sit at a table and proceed to drink a bunch of wine over the
course of an hour. It’s irreverent/bawdy, an hour-long reading by Hank
Chinaski, Redondo Beach, California, 1980; the type of art that inspires
almost as much as a beautiful woman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB6IyLTvB7M&feature=youtu.be
Hopper
Near the end of this content his wife tells him not to do something (turn the page before both have read), and you can see his lips move "Why?"
http://hyperallergic.com/141441/a-glimpse-of-edward-and-jo-hopper-in-their-studios/
http://hyperallergic.com/141441/a-glimpse-of-edward-and-jo-hopper-in-their-studios/
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