Subject: Art, again
Date: Jan 11 23:34:20 1995
From: Michael Price - Michael_Price at mindlink.bc.ca




First, a moment's silence for Peter Cook, the Brit satirist.

I'd rather have been a judge than a miner, but I didn't have the Latin. I
didn't have the Latin, so I'd had it as far as being a judge was concerned.
So I became a miner instead.

* * *

Ah, that cat, and its propensity for bags. What if I've joined an order
that requires a vow of ignorance? ;-)

* * *

Sure I can suggest a cheap hotel where the band quits about 5 AM, there's
the odd parking space among the Harley-Davidsons, where it's not too bad
when the wind blows away from the fish processing plant--well, OK, OK,
somewhere quieter. Have you considered a B & B? There's one sort of in this
part of town where this Brit birder I know stays whenever he's in town.
Shall I inquire? And it's not too far from where there's a good breakfast
joint (the federal gov.'s Geological Survey Dept. actually classifies it as
a place where cholesterol has extruded to the service in sufficient
quantities to support a viable mine). And I'd *love* to join you!
* * *

Re the koan of the sound of one hand clapping: you'll hear that sound when
a guy gets fresh with a woman, usually followed quickly by "Get lost,
creep." What is the sound of one irritated woman calling herself a cab?
You're a cab, baby.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOH! What was your face before your parents were born, indeed! I
get a picture of your highschool yearbook where instead of your portrait
there's just a little notice saying "TBA". What did the Mona Lisa (if you
took up the singing of torch songs or C & W hurtin' songs, you could bill
yourself as the Lisa Moaner. Sorry.) look like before Da Vinci's folks were
hatched? What mileage did the Model T Ford get before Henry Ford's Mom &
Pop were little gleams--oh jeez, I could go on.

Seriously, parody aside, why have you no answer yet? What answers have you
come up with and why discard them? What is she *really* asking here? And is
she related to Frank Luria? Isn't there a writer named Luria? An
astronomer?

* * *

Regarding Art.
Other animals, such as painting elephants (no, no, no, elephants that
*paint*--painting elephants just wears your arms out, giraffes are just as
bad), or chimpanzee/gorilla 'painting' is on a level of young children's
art, so if it's art for kids...
Humans may not be the only creatures to create Art, but we are pre-eminent
in that only we can produce Art Theory. I'd like to see some other primate
attempt to create that stultifying, arcane guff.
When a symphony orchestra plays Mozart (get it? Moz-*ART*, nyurk, nyurk),
and we say it's art aren't we talking of the conductor's interpretation as
well as the art intrinsic to the piece? The division between art & craft is
a false one, I think, and serves the same occupational purpose as the one
between doctors and nurses/midwives: a cementing of 'superior' status.
Idiot savants? Nah. Hypertrophy of one or two capacities in a context of
general hypotrophy is no more artistic in purpose than the arrangement of
purloined silver spoons by a magpie.
And, oh boy, do I want get into the 'Is it Art or is it Porn?' issue. About
as badly as I'd like to go to Rwanda or Grozny (2nd Prize is *two*
weeks...)
Neither one of them things has a good working definition that three people
can agree on. One's more fun than the other, but damn if I can figure out
which one. What's elevating? What's the best in us? Will we all agree to
the meaning of these phrases? To dip into Jamesian stuff for a minute, does
your definition of art, like religion depend on which side of the
Pleasure/Pain threshold you typically live? I really believe (as if anyone
asked me) that the bare question is meaningless: I need someone to modify
or qualify by describing context and intent before I can get a grasp on
what they're talking about. Otherwise it's like trying to carve your
initials in a neutrino. First, you have to catch a neutrino--.

This just in: I just heard on the radio (Arts Tonight on CBC, which is
running a series on the Beethoven Quartets) this cellist with the Cleveland
String Quartet tell the story of playing Beethoven quartets at a recital
for grade school kids and their parents in 1975. He said there was one
young girl who went clearly nutso for the music; after the concert she came
backstage with her mom and gave him a baseball cap with the words
'Cleveland Quartet' on it, and as she did so, she said "One mind, one
heart, eight hands." *That's* art.

* * *

Over and out, pard. An *early* start tomorrow. A friend invited me to raft
a river with her group (a very *mild* river) to look at Bald Eagles at
Brackendale near Squamish, which has the *largest* concentrations of
Baldies outside one or two places in Alaska (2 yrs ago there were nearly
3,000 of the damn things: it was like being trapped in a Samuel Beckett
Look-Alike Contest).

Big Schmecks
M