There are definitely quandaries that need creative, discerning, thoughtful guidance. Subito.
So, as usual, life continues to be interesting and to provide plenty of areas in need of work.
Or, in Confucian terms, we should do a little rectification of naming: are we living up to the promise of our professions?
Finally, on a personal note, it has been a pretty lonesome summer as I put my time towards my book and I console myself by thinking of how Erasmus spent three years teaching himself ancient Greek, begging his friends to buy him the books he needed. But I have taken breaks, often to put the mind out to pasture. I am finding it 'cleaner' to think, and think a lot, before I write (so not much is written, but the idea is gaining lucidity and cogency).
One type of break has been to make desktop icons from images of museum displays (one is in the bottom image) which I consider not to be a waste of time because sometimes when I am struggling to compose my thoughts as I write, having this constellation of images that span time and geography, with such different contexts, it is a help to the mind, like a mind map.
A second is to explore music, which also helps the thought - not only for its rhythm. There was a period in my life when I socialised very heavily with musicians and could write a lot about that. Liu Sola has written the best short story about musicians, "In Search of the King of Singers" and composed a modern rendition of the Chinese classic about Zhong Ziqi and Yu Bo Ya who form the model of ideal friendship, and about whom the term 知音 was coined, literally meaning "to know the tone" but which denotes a close friendship. That classic encapsulates so well something of the essence of music. I have included links to music at the end of this post.
Howard Gardner updating his multiple intelligences with the priority of doing good work.
Speaking of AI: a Fresh Air podcast on all of our data that is being mined and sold;
also, this old podcast put out by Mozilla with Zuboff, author of Surveillance Capitalism.
Another area in need of addressing is the surge in the use of public lands - as people are now in need of instruction in how to be in the outdoors. The exact figure is cited in this Trail Show podcast episode which features the curator of the Our Public Lands Hate You instagram account, who has taken it upon himself to start dialogues (mostly) with the social media influencers who are using public lands irresponsibly (the famous recent incident being how they damaged the super bloom in CA).This person has essentially taken on an extra, thankless, unpaid job.
Politics:
I cannot recommend enough this blog post on centrism, which I have sent to my relatives, because it is always nice when the message comes, for the nth time, from someone else.
An article on the Japanese origins of 8chan (Tablet Magazine).
Also from Tablet, "The Left's Race War."
Lastly, for this section, this quote: "Censorship nowadays isn’t done by constricting speeches; it’s by flooding the information space with so much bullshit that people don’t know what the hell’s going on anymore." From a LitHub interview.
The NPR series Tiny Desk Concerts (on iTunes; YouTube; their site) - perhaps I am late to the party on this one. Excellent sound engineering. Special performances (we have all seen A Capella-type live performances, but there is something so intimate about these, even watching them online).
I will link to the Jeremy Dutcher performance, and agree he is unique, not just in terms of his byline: hailing from an indigenous tribe of 100; trained in classical music and opera. The series has clips with artists ranging from Bilal to Florence and the Machine. The series introduced me to TX siblings The Oh Hellos and to Oddissee (links lead to their Band Camp pages). The latter reminds me of an artist who one took out a prohibitively large loan to go to Columbia, seeking there to learn strategies of how to more successfully produce 'positive' hip hop (there is a term for that that I forget). He was talking to Mick Taussig who gave him a look that I will never forget though of course I may have misinterpreted his signal that what he was looking in the wrong place.
On the 'positive' note, two Red Eagle videos: Still Here and Song of Survival - the latter shows a young boy on the reservation who combats the misery through music, which is not a new theme, but sometimes I think about life on the reservation... It is also interesting to see in the first video fusions of traditional dance and breakdance. And this electric pow wow inspired video incorporating a Cree singer group by Tribe Called Red. Also interesting is their 360 degree video.
The potentials of electronic music and other artistic applications of technology are still being explored and it is exciting to watch it develop (this is no Jean Michel Jarre synthesiser!)
No comments:
Post a Comment