| That is one of the great difficulties in experiencing the unconscious—that one identifies with it and becomes a fool. You must not identify with the unconscious; you must keep outside, detached, and observe objectively what happens.... it is exceedingly difficult to accept such a thing, because we are so imbued with the fact that our unconscious is our own—my unconscious, his unconscious, her unconscious—and our prejudice is so strong that we have the greatest trouble disidentifying. | ||||
—Jung, C. G. (1996), The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1922 by C. G. Jung [wikipedia; Seven Sermons to the Dead] | ||||
Wednesday 31 August 2011
Jung ; Advice for Your Self.
Sunday 28 August 2011
Blue
AAaH! love It!
movin,,on,,,
oh yeah! Let's groove....
Movin...on....
Someone asked the Dalai Lama what suprises him most.
He responded, "Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived."
This is......the Moment.....
Cowboys, and other stuff..
Beautiful.
I like this ,too,
Nice one Kenny! way to go Dude!
I watched these guys, week in, week out, through some very dodgy early years!
Stomp those feet!
Saturday 27 August 2011
Hank Snow, from, Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Excellent.
Today,is, the start, of, Liverpool's, [UK], world famous, 'Matthew Street Music Fest'.
We welcome visitors , from, all over, The World.
See web! Way too much going on!
The only thing, we cannot guarantee, is the weather!
Hank Snow, influenced, many, young UK musicians....His Music lives on!...We owe him..and many others..
A coincidence, Then? that ,one, local, group of Artists, have inaugurated,
The, 'Matthew Street Fridge Festival!', [deliberate Pun!]
What's on Your Fridge?
On mine, I got little magnets, little Memories....
I'm leaving now, gotta work!
If you ever come to Liverpool, I'll be pleased, to show you around!
Have a great Day!
Friday 26 August 2011
Thursday 25 August 2011
Tumaxale, A Culture Hero
There were once two brothers who were traveling together.
When they came to a large lake they decided to separate, one going along the shore in one direction and one in the other.
One of them, Tumaxale, had not gone far before he came to a trail which had been used by people. He followed this trail between two mountains until it came out again on the large lake. He passed along where sky and water were seen on either side, and walked across on an old beaver dam. He saw a pretty girl sitting nearby, whom he addressed as sister, asking her why she was there. The girl, as soon as she saw someone approach, began to cry. " Why do you cry, sister? " the young man asked. " A large beaver lives here that can only be pacified by giving him a human being. I have been given to him," she replied. " He said he would come to get me this evening when the sun is half way down that big mountain." Saying that he would watch for the beaver, he left the girl on the top of the mountain where he told her to wait for him. The girl told him that the beaver came out just at the edge of the water where the beaver dam made a bend. The young man sat there watching for the beaver and keeping track of the sun, and said to himself, "My sister said he will come out when the sun reaches that point."
The water began to move. Although the lake was a large one it was all set in motion. The beaver himself looking like a mountain came out at the turn of the dam. When the young man saw the beaver he said to himself that he was too big; but he also remembered how bad he was, and shot him, the arrow striking just behind the ear. He then ran away, Oh how he ran. He came up where the girl was sitting and the rising water came right up toward them. The water receded, and they followed it back until they came to the beaver dam. Because the beaver was so large he cut it up in little pieces and threw them all over the country. "You will be only so large," he said. The pieces were as large as a man's little finger and there became as many beaver as there were pieces which were scattered over the world.
They two started after the people who were living on ahead. " I will sit here and wait for you, sister," he said. " Go to your relatives." As soon as they saw her coming they all started to cry, thinking they would not live. " My brother killed it," she told them. "Where is your brother?" they asked. " He is sitting right there," she said. " And what is your brother's name? " they asked her. " His name is Tumaxale (he goes along the shore)," she told them. They were all glad he had done that, and did not want to let him go away. Each one of them asked him to be a son-in-law. He stayed there a short time, but concluded he would not remain in one place. He told them he was going out. They warned him there were bad people there. He went up to them and clubbed them all to death, leaving not one of them alive.
He walked along the road until he came to a large place where he slept. There was a narrow place between two hills where it was the custom to set snares. He set a snare there and went to bed. It was very dark and daylight did not return. He kept climbing up the hill to look for the dawn, but there was not a sign of it. The darkness had lasted so long his wood was all gone. Although it was still night he went back where he had set the snare. He found it was the sun that had been caught, but it was so hot he could not go near it. "Let all the animals come here quickly," he said to himself. They all came running there, but could do nothing. The 'very last, a mouse, came running back all burned. He had gnawed the rope off. The young man ran back along his own road to the place where the sun had been caught and took his snare again.
He went on the way he had been going. Winter came on him again. As he was walking along, he came to a place where someone had drawn a sleigh along. Tumaxale had slept there and hung up a lynx. Some one had eaten some of the lynx in his absence. He started to follow him. He saw he had gone along there that day. He was again carrying a big lynx. When they saw him coming they prepared a tipi for him. He asked them to roast the lynx he was carrying. " My grandchild, did you ever eat this?" someone asked. "I only make use of its fat," he replied. She gave it to him. " I live on this kind only," he said. He drank only the soup of it.
Then they lay down for the night. That one was not a proper man. He looked carefully at the man's feet as he lay there. His moccasins were hanging up at his feet. He put the other man's moccasins in the place of his own. Then the man with whom he was staying thought he would take down his guest's moccasins, but he really took down all his own, put them in the fire and lay down again. In the morning he got up before the other man and quickly took down his own moccasins. " Here, grandchild, those are my moccasins," the guest called to him. He passed them to him and began to cry. He sat there without any moccasins. Tumaxale only had two pair of moccasins but they did not wear out. He went entirely around the edge of the sky without wearing them out. He gave him one of the two pair of his own moccasins. He was pleased, and gave him one of his own arrows. He too was pleased. "When you are about to lie down tonight we will shoot at the end of a stump," he said.
Then he went on the way he had been going. He dropped the lynx which he had been carrying for food. Suddenly he came to a trail that had been used by people. There he shot at a stump. The arrows were pointing up. "Do not get it," he was told. He thought it was quite close and stepped up toward it. The arrow went further and further up until he followed it clear to the sky. Then he went on after it until he came where some people were living. The people to whom he came lived on nothing but caribou. He thought it was on this world.
After he had remained there a short time he thought he would go to his own country. Then the old woman made a line of caribou skin for him. She made a large amount of the line and then she made a hole for hirn through the ground. She put him in a skin and gave him a knife. " When you think you are on the earth cut through the skin," she told him. Finally, he thought he must be on the earth. He tried to swing himself but he did not move. He cut through the skin to find himself on a big bird's nest. He said, " Grandmother your line," as he had been told to do; and she drew the line up.
Then he started to go far away.- He was on a large bird's nest. Three young birds were sitting in it. He came up to them and began to ask questions. The two larger ones said they did not like this man who had been given them. For that reason he knocked them down with a club. One of them told him what he asked. "You are not going to live," he warned the man. "When does your father come back?" he asked the bird. " There is hail and a big wind when he comes back," the young bird said. " And your mother, when does she get back? " he asked again. " She comes when there is rain and a big wind," was the reply.
The man made ready for them. There was hail and the father returned. " I smell an animal here," he said. "Well, what have you been leaving here?" the young one replied. "I certainly smell something alive," he said and went around the edge of his nest looking for it. He knocked him down with a club.
Again, the mother was coming back. Again, " I smell something alive," she said. Again, she started around the edge of the nest. Again, he knocked her down. He took the small one and it went about with him. " You will be just this small," he told it. He traveled around with it until it was just large enough to fly. They came to a river and the man put the bird on the bank. " Do you see a fish swimming about at the bottom of the river?" he asked the bird. "Yes," he replied. "Well, jump on it," he told the bird. He jumped on the fish, caught it, and took it out of the water. " Why don't you eat it?" he asked the bird. " Is it good?" he asked again. " Yes," was the reply. "As long as the world exists you shall eat them. You shall live on them," the man said.
Again he started on the way he was going. Suddenly, he came where there was a road used by people. He traveled along on this road, camping on it until he came where an old woman was living. When he came to her she said, "Grandchild, how have you been traveling? Grandchild, these people are bad. You will not live. My three daughters have all kinds of bad things living in their bodies with which they kill people." He killed all the things that lived in them. That is why the old man was very angry.
Then the young man said, "I will make arrows." "Well, let him go for them," the old man said. "Grandmother, what does he mean?" he asked. " Grandchild, he means a bad place. It is there he is in the habit of going," she replied. "What kind of a place is it?" he asked. "At a place where saskatoons grow there are large snakes. It is there he goes. That is the place he means," she said. Then he went there. He made himself stone leggings and went among the saskatoons with them. The snakes all rushed at him and caught him by the legs. He clubbed the snakes, took the arrow- shafts, and went back.
"Get the polishing stone from your father for me," he said. "Let him get the polishing stones where I usually get them," the old man said. He wentto his grandmother to ask about it. " Grandchild, it is a difficult place. There is an elk there who is a person. He walks back and forth on the top of a cutbank. He has something that chases people and barks after them like a dog. You can't get up to him without his knowing it," she told him. He got up to him and was ready for him. "I saw you first," he said. "You go down the bank first." The man refused, but nevertheless was forced to run down the bank and he kicked at him. " Why didn't you run straight along the road?" he asked. They ran along again and he kicked at him but did not hit him. He threw him down and he fell down the bank. The elk's wife down below killed him. She thought it was a stranger she was killing but it was her own husband. The woman came up to him from below, and began running about. He knocked her down and killed her with his club. He took the polishing stone and went home with it.
The young man put his arrows in the fire, " I will put feathers on them," he said to himself. "Go to your father and get feathers for me," he said. " Let him get feathers where I always get them," the old man replied. Again he went to his grandmother, "Grandchild, he means a hard place. Big eagles live there," she told him. That they might not get his scent he approached them from the windward. He killed all the birds with his club, took the feathers, and went home with them.
Again he said, "Get sinew for me from your father." "Let him get it where I always get it," said the old man. Again, he went to his grandmother, " Grandmother, where does he mean?" he asked. "Grandchild, it is a difficult place. There is a big buffalo living on a large prairie. One cannot get to him without his knowledge. Snipes which make a noise when he does not see a person sit on the ends of his horns. As soon as he came where the buffalo lay the birds saw him and flew up. He made them go down again. They flew up again without cause. "Why do you mislead me?" he asked. "We were deceived by the leaves," they replied. He lay down again. The man transformed himself into a rodent and made himself a road to the buffalo. He made roads in many directions. Then he gnawed the hair off well below the animal's shoulder and stabbed him there. He ran away along his own road. He killed him, took sinew for himself, and went home with it.
"Go to your father and get pitch for me," he said. "Let him get pitch where I always get it," the old man replied. Then he went to his grandmother. " Grandmother, what does he mean?" "Grandchild, there are trees which are like animals. These large trees are growing together and it is only in between them that pitch is to be had. That is what he means." Then he made mittens of stone for 'himself and put them on. When he came there he threw in a stick. The trees struck against each other. He pulled his hand out leaving only his mitten. After that he took the pitch he wanted.
Now he had killed all the things the old man used to dream about. This caused him to be very angry.
Then he told his three daughters that they should go for berries and they went off for them. "My son-in-law, some grizzly bears used to live over there. Let us go after them," the old man said. They two started to go there and went on until they came to a large prairie on a point of land. " This is where they used to be," he said. They went down to the river. There were three bears standing together on the prairie. " You watch for them here," the old man said. The young man lay in wait for them while the old man scared them down there. The three bears ran toward him and as they came up he put an arrow into each one as it passed. Then he called for his wife, and told her that the young man had killed all their children.
Tumaxale then chased him entirely around the world. As he was about to kill the old man, he jumped into the water. He called for a pelican and one lighted there and drank up all the water. They looked for him everywhere on the lake bottom and could not find him. He called for small diving birds. When they came he instructed them to go to the pelican. When they lighted by him he said, " You seem to like my belly. I myself was looking for the skull of the black water beetles." They all stabbed the pelican right in his mouth and flew away. The mean old man was completely drowned.
After that he started on in the direction he had been going.
Not far from there he met an old man whose head was gray.
He was a pitiful looking man. " Who is he? " he said to himself.
It was his younger brother.
They were boys when they separated.
When they saw each other, the other one also said to himself, "Who is that?"
They began to tell each other what they had been doing, and then they realized they were brothers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
with thanks,
taken from this excellent site...
http://www.native-languages.org/beaverstory.htm
When they came to a large lake they decided to separate, one going along the shore in one direction and one in the other.
One of them, Tumaxale, had not gone far before he came to a trail which had been used by people. He followed this trail between two mountains until it came out again on the large lake. He passed along where sky and water were seen on either side, and walked across on an old beaver dam. He saw a pretty girl sitting nearby, whom he addressed as sister, asking her why she was there. The girl, as soon as she saw someone approach, began to cry. " Why do you cry, sister? " the young man asked. " A large beaver lives here that can only be pacified by giving him a human being. I have been given to him," she replied. " He said he would come to get me this evening when the sun is half way down that big mountain." Saying that he would watch for the beaver, he left the girl on the top of the mountain where he told her to wait for him. The girl told him that the beaver came out just at the edge of the water where the beaver dam made a bend. The young man sat there watching for the beaver and keeping track of the sun, and said to himself, "My sister said he will come out when the sun reaches that point."
The water began to move. Although the lake was a large one it was all set in motion. The beaver himself looking like a mountain came out at the turn of the dam. When the young man saw the beaver he said to himself that he was too big; but he also remembered how bad he was, and shot him, the arrow striking just behind the ear. He then ran away, Oh how he ran. He came up where the girl was sitting and the rising water came right up toward them. The water receded, and they followed it back until they came to the beaver dam. Because the beaver was so large he cut it up in little pieces and threw them all over the country. "You will be only so large," he said. The pieces were as large as a man's little finger and there became as many beaver as there were pieces which were scattered over the world.
They two started after the people who were living on ahead. " I will sit here and wait for you, sister," he said. " Go to your relatives." As soon as they saw her coming they all started to cry, thinking they would not live. " My brother killed it," she told them. "Where is your brother?" they asked. " He is sitting right there," she said. " And what is your brother's name? " they asked her. " His name is Tumaxale (he goes along the shore)," she told them. They were all glad he had done that, and did not want to let him go away. Each one of them asked him to be a son-in-law. He stayed there a short time, but concluded he would not remain in one place. He told them he was going out. They warned him there were bad people there. He went up to them and clubbed them all to death, leaving not one of them alive.
He walked along the road until he came to a large place where he slept. There was a narrow place between two hills where it was the custom to set snares. He set a snare there and went to bed. It was very dark and daylight did not return. He kept climbing up the hill to look for the dawn, but there was not a sign of it. The darkness had lasted so long his wood was all gone. Although it was still night he went back where he had set the snare. He found it was the sun that had been caught, but it was so hot he could not go near it. "Let all the animals come here quickly," he said to himself. They all came running there, but could do nothing. The 'very last, a mouse, came running back all burned. He had gnawed the rope off. The young man ran back along his own road to the place where the sun had been caught and took his snare again.
He went on the way he had been going. Winter came on him again. As he was walking along, he came to a place where someone had drawn a sleigh along. Tumaxale had slept there and hung up a lynx. Some one had eaten some of the lynx in his absence. He started to follow him. He saw he had gone along there that day. He was again carrying a big lynx. When they saw him coming they prepared a tipi for him. He asked them to roast the lynx he was carrying. " My grandchild, did you ever eat this?" someone asked. "I only make use of its fat," he replied. She gave it to him. " I live on this kind only," he said. He drank only the soup of it.
Then they lay down for the night. That one was not a proper man. He looked carefully at the man's feet as he lay there. His moccasins were hanging up at his feet. He put the other man's moccasins in the place of his own. Then the man with whom he was staying thought he would take down his guest's moccasins, but he really took down all his own, put them in the fire and lay down again. In the morning he got up before the other man and quickly took down his own moccasins. " Here, grandchild, those are my moccasins," the guest called to him. He passed them to him and began to cry. He sat there without any moccasins. Tumaxale only had two pair of moccasins but they did not wear out. He went entirely around the edge of the sky without wearing them out. He gave him one of the two pair of his own moccasins. He was pleased, and gave him one of his own arrows. He too was pleased. "When you are about to lie down tonight we will shoot at the end of a stump," he said.
Then he went on the way he had been going. He dropped the lynx which he had been carrying for food. Suddenly he came to a trail that had been used by people. There he shot at a stump. The arrows were pointing up. "Do not get it," he was told. He thought it was quite close and stepped up toward it. The arrow went further and further up until he followed it clear to the sky. Then he went on after it until he came where some people were living. The people to whom he came lived on nothing but caribou. He thought it was on this world.
After he had remained there a short time he thought he would go to his own country. Then the old woman made a line of caribou skin for him. She made a large amount of the line and then she made a hole for hirn through the ground. She put him in a skin and gave him a knife. " When you think you are on the earth cut through the skin," she told him. Finally, he thought he must be on the earth. He tried to swing himself but he did not move. He cut through the skin to find himself on a big bird's nest. He said, " Grandmother your line," as he had been told to do; and she drew the line up.
Then he started to go far away.- He was on a large bird's nest. Three young birds were sitting in it. He came up to them and began to ask questions. The two larger ones said they did not like this man who had been given them. For that reason he knocked them down with a club. One of them told him what he asked. "You are not going to live," he warned the man. "When does your father come back?" he asked the bird. " There is hail and a big wind when he comes back," the young bird said. " And your mother, when does she get back? " he asked again. " She comes when there is rain and a big wind," was the reply.
The man made ready for them. There was hail and the father returned. " I smell an animal here," he said. "Well, what have you been leaving here?" the young one replied. "I certainly smell something alive," he said and went around the edge of his nest looking for it. He knocked him down with a club.
Again, the mother was coming back. Again, " I smell something alive," she said. Again, she started around the edge of the nest. Again, he knocked her down. He took the small one and it went about with him. " You will be just this small," he told it. He traveled around with it until it was just large enough to fly. They came to a river and the man put the bird on the bank. " Do you see a fish swimming about at the bottom of the river?" he asked the bird. "Yes," he replied. "Well, jump on it," he told the bird. He jumped on the fish, caught it, and took it out of the water. " Why don't you eat it?" he asked the bird. " Is it good?" he asked again. " Yes," was the reply. "As long as the world exists you shall eat them. You shall live on them," the man said.
Again he started on the way he was going. Suddenly, he came where there was a road used by people. He traveled along on this road, camping on it until he came where an old woman was living. When he came to her she said, "Grandchild, how have you been traveling? Grandchild, these people are bad. You will not live. My three daughters have all kinds of bad things living in their bodies with which they kill people." He killed all the things that lived in them. That is why the old man was very angry.
Then the young man said, "I will make arrows." "Well, let him go for them," the old man said. "Grandmother, what does he mean?" he asked. " Grandchild, he means a bad place. It is there he is in the habit of going," she replied. "What kind of a place is it?" he asked. "At a place where saskatoons grow there are large snakes. It is there he goes. That is the place he means," she said. Then he went there. He made himself stone leggings and went among the saskatoons with them. The snakes all rushed at him and caught him by the legs. He clubbed the snakes, took the arrow- shafts, and went back.
"Get the polishing stone from your father for me," he said. "Let him get the polishing stones where I usually get them," the old man said. He wentto his grandmother to ask about it. " Grandchild, it is a difficult place. There is an elk there who is a person. He walks back and forth on the top of a cutbank. He has something that chases people and barks after them like a dog. You can't get up to him without his knowing it," she told him. He got up to him and was ready for him. "I saw you first," he said. "You go down the bank first." The man refused, but nevertheless was forced to run down the bank and he kicked at him. " Why didn't you run straight along the road?" he asked. They ran along again and he kicked at him but did not hit him. He threw him down and he fell down the bank. The elk's wife down below killed him. She thought it was a stranger she was killing but it was her own husband. The woman came up to him from below, and began running about. He knocked her down and killed her with his club. He took the polishing stone and went home with it.
The young man put his arrows in the fire, " I will put feathers on them," he said to himself. "Go to your father and get feathers for me," he said. " Let him get feathers where I always get them," the old man replied. Again he went to his grandmother, "Grandchild, he means a hard place. Big eagles live there," she told him. That they might not get his scent he approached them from the windward. He killed all the birds with his club, took the feathers, and went home with them.
Again he said, "Get sinew for me from your father." "Let him get it where I always get it," said the old man. Again, he went to his grandmother, " Grandmother, where does he mean?" he asked. "Grandchild, it is a difficult place. There is a big buffalo living on a large prairie. One cannot get to him without his knowledge. Snipes which make a noise when he does not see a person sit on the ends of his horns. As soon as he came where the buffalo lay the birds saw him and flew up. He made them go down again. They flew up again without cause. "Why do you mislead me?" he asked. "We were deceived by the leaves," they replied. He lay down again. The man transformed himself into a rodent and made himself a road to the buffalo. He made roads in many directions. Then he gnawed the hair off well below the animal's shoulder and stabbed him there. He ran away along his own road. He killed him, took sinew for himself, and went home with it.
"Go to your father and get pitch for me," he said. "Let him get pitch where I always get it," the old man replied. Then he went to his grandmother. " Grandmother, what does he mean?" "Grandchild, there are trees which are like animals. These large trees are growing together and it is only in between them that pitch is to be had. That is what he means." Then he made mittens of stone for 'himself and put them on. When he came there he threw in a stick. The trees struck against each other. He pulled his hand out leaving only his mitten. After that he took the pitch he wanted.
Now he had killed all the things the old man used to dream about. This caused him to be very angry.
Then he told his three daughters that they should go for berries and they went off for them. "My son-in-law, some grizzly bears used to live over there. Let us go after them," the old man said. They two started to go there and went on until they came to a large prairie on a point of land. " This is where they used to be," he said. They went down to the river. There were three bears standing together on the prairie. " You watch for them here," the old man said. The young man lay in wait for them while the old man scared them down there. The three bears ran toward him and as they came up he put an arrow into each one as it passed. Then he called for his wife, and told her that the young man had killed all their children.
Tumaxale then chased him entirely around the world. As he was about to kill the old man, he jumped into the water. He called for a pelican and one lighted there and drank up all the water. They looked for him everywhere on the lake bottom and could not find him. He called for small diving birds. When they came he instructed them to go to the pelican. When they lighted by him he said, " You seem to like my belly. I myself was looking for the skull of the black water beetles." They all stabbed the pelican right in his mouth and flew away. The mean old man was completely drowned.
After that he started on in the direction he had been going.
Not far from there he met an old man whose head was gray.
He was a pitiful looking man. " Who is he? " he said to himself.
It was his younger brother.
They were boys when they separated.
When they saw each other, the other one also said to himself, "Who is that?"
They began to tell each other what they had been doing, and then they realized they were brothers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
with thanks,
taken from this excellent site...
http://www.native-languages.org/beaverstory.htm
Wednesday 24 August 2011
Descartes and the Pineal Gland
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pineal-gland/
Click on above link, for info...
Here's some fine Music...
AWESOME PHOTOGRAPHY.
Meanwhile, down in the Swamp....
[Madeleine].....
Les Frères Balfa ou Balfa Brothers, est un groupe de musique cadienne formé de cinq frères.
Ils furent les « ambassadeurs » de cette musique en parcourant les festivals de musique folk dans les années 1970, aux États-Unis et en Europe
Click on above link, for info...
Here's some fine Music...
AWESOME PHOTOGRAPHY.
Meanwhile, down in the Swamp....
[Madeleine].....
Les Frères Balfa ou Balfa Brothers, est un groupe de musique cadienne formé de cinq frères.
Ils furent les « ambassadeurs » de cette musique en parcourant les festivals de musique folk dans les années 1970, aux États-Unis et en Europe
Tuesday 23 August 2011
Friday 19 August 2011
Wednesday 17 August 2011
Saturday 13 August 2011
Say it ,as it is, Buddy.
A good friend,
who points out mistakes and imperfections
and rebukes evil,
is to be respected,
as if he reveals a secret of hidden treasure.
[Attributed to Buddha]
who points out mistakes and imperfections
and rebukes evil,
is to be respected,
as if he reveals a secret of hidden treasure.
[Attributed to Buddha]
Friday 12 August 2011
Thursday 11 August 2011
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
[wikipedia]
The rest of his work is an elaborate analysis and unpacking of this sentence, which begins with his Kantian epistemology, but finds thorough elaboration within his version of the principle of sufficient reason. This is responsible for providing adequate explanations for any ‘thing,’ or object that occurs in relation to a subject of knowing; of any representation possible there is always a possible question of 'why?' that one can address to it. It amounts to what Schopenhauer has done, in his view, to extend and complete what Kant began with his Critique of Pure Reason.
The Four Classes
Four classes of explanation fall under the principle’s rubric. Hence, four classes of objects occur always and already only in relation to a knowing subject, according to a correlative capacity within the subject. These classes are summarized as follows:
It [the principle of sufficient reason] explains things in reference to one another, but it always leaves unexplained something that it presupposes,” and the two things that are absolutely inexplicable are the principle itself and the “thing in itself”,[5] which Schopenhauer connects with the will to live. The principle, in another point of view, provides the general form of any given perspective, presupposing both subject and object. The thing in itself, consequently, remains forever unknowable from any standpoint, for any qualities attributed to it are merely perceived, i.e., constructed in the mind from sensations given in time and space. Furthermore, because the concepts we form from our perceptions cannot in any way refer with any validity to anything beyond these limits to experience, all proofs for the existence of God or anything beyond the possibility of experience fall away under the razor of Kant’s critique.
Kant termed this critical or transcendental idealism. Important to note here is that “Transcendental” does not refer to knowing the unknowable, but rather it refers to the a priori intellectual conditions for experience.
This intuition of the a priori understanding is a modern elucidation of the postmodern expression "always already" : time and space always and already determine the possibilities of experience.
Additionally, Schopenhauer distinguishes from this something he calls a "spurious a priori": cultural perspectives (ideologies) one is born into that determine one's relationship to experience, in addition to the forms of space and time.[6] He considers these false because it is possible to investigate and uncover their grounds, leading to a reorientation that regards the phenomena of experience as source material of new knowledge, rather than one's always already prejudices about phenomena.
The World as Representation
Schopenhauer’s central proposition is the main idea of his entire philosophy, he states simply as “The world is my representation.”
The rest of his work is an elaborate analysis and unpacking of this sentence, which begins with his Kantian epistemology, but finds thorough elaboration within his version of the principle of sufficient reason. This is responsible for providing adequate explanations for any ‘thing,’ or object that occurs in relation to a subject of knowing; of any representation possible there is always a possible question of 'why?' that one can address to it. It amounts to what Schopenhauer has done, in his view, to extend and complete what Kant began with his Critique of Pure Reason.
The Four Classes
Four classes of explanation fall under the principle’s rubric. Hence, four classes of objects occur always and already only in relation to a knowing subject, according to a correlative capacity within the subject. These classes are summarized as follows:
- Becoming: Only with the combination of time and space does perceptual actuality become possible for a subject, allowing for ideas of perception, and this provides the ground of becoming to judgments. This is the law of causality, which is, when considered subjectively, intellectual and a priori understanding. All possible judgments that are inferences of a cause from an effect—a physical state a subject infers as caused by another physical state or vice versa—take this as the ground of the possibility of such judgments. The natural sciences operate within this aspect of the principle.
- Knowing: This class of objects subsumes all judgments, or abstract concepts, which a subject knows through conceptual, discursive reason rooted in the ground of knowing. The other three classes of objects are immediate representations, while this class is always and already composed of representations of representations. Therefore, the truth-value of concepts abstracted from any of the other three classes of objects is grounded in referring to something outside the concept. Concepts are abstract judgments grounded in intuitions of time or space, ideas of perception (causality apparent in the outer world), or acts of will (causality experienced from within). This class makes language (in the form of abstract judgments that are then communicable) possible, and as a consequence, all the sciences become possible within the umbrella of rhetoric.
- Being: Time and space comprise separate grounds of being. These a priori (prior to experience) forms respectively allow for an “inner,” temporal sense and an “outer,” spatial sense for the subject; subjectively, these are the forms of pure sensibility—they make sensations possible for a subject. The first makes arithmetic possible, and is presupposed for all other forms of the principle of sufficient reason; the other makes geometry possible. Time is one dimensional and purely successive; each moment determines the following moment; in space, any position is determined only in its relations to all other positions in a finite, hence, closed system. Thus, intuitions of time and space provide the grounds of being that make arithmetical and geometrical judgments possible, which are also valid for experience.
- Willing: It is possible for a subject of knowing to know himself directly as ‘will.’ A subject knows his acts of will only after the fact, in time. Action then, finds its root in the law of motivation, the ground of acting, which is causality, but seen from the inside. In other words, not only does a subject know his body as an object of outer sense, in space, but also in an inner sense, in time alone; a subject has self-consciousness in addition to knowing his body as an idea of perception. Why does a subject act the way he does? Where a sufficient motive appears in the form either of an intuition, perception, or abstract conception, the subject will act according to his character, or ‘will.’ E.g., despite all plans to the contrary, when the actual moment comes to act, we do so within the constituents of the rhetorical situation (the various representations present in a subject’s experience) and are often surprised by what we actually say and do. The human sciences find their ground in this aspect of the principle.
Conclusion
Different rules govern the possible explanations for representations of the four classes and “every explanation given in accordance with this guiding line is merely relative.It [the principle of sufficient reason] explains things in reference to one another, but it always leaves unexplained something that it presupposes,” and the two things that are absolutely inexplicable are the principle itself and the “thing in itself”,[5] which Schopenhauer connects with the will to live. The principle, in another point of view, provides the general form of any given perspective, presupposing both subject and object. The thing in itself, consequently, remains forever unknowable from any standpoint, for any qualities attributed to it are merely perceived, i.e., constructed in the mind from sensations given in time and space. Furthermore, because the concepts we form from our perceptions cannot in any way refer with any validity to anything beyond these limits to experience, all proofs for the existence of God or anything beyond the possibility of experience fall away under the razor of Kant’s critique.
Kant termed this critical or transcendental idealism. Important to note here is that “Transcendental” does not refer to knowing the unknowable, but rather it refers to the a priori intellectual conditions for experience.
This intuition of the a priori understanding is a modern elucidation of the postmodern expression "always already" : time and space always and already determine the possibilities of experience.
Additionally, Schopenhauer distinguishes from this something he calls a "spurious a priori": cultural perspectives (ideologies) one is born into that determine one's relationship to experience, in addition to the forms of space and time.[6] He considers these false because it is possible to investigate and uncover their grounds, leading to a reorientation that regards the phenomena of experience as source material of new knowledge, rather than one's always already prejudices about phenomena.
Tuesday 9 August 2011
Lao Tzu
Manifest Plainness
Embrace Simplicity
Reduce Selfishness
Have Few Desires
------------------------
Lao-Tzu
Embrace Simplicity
Reduce Selfishness
Have Few Desires
------------------------
Lao-Tzu
Monday 8 August 2011
Saturday 6 August 2011
Answer to a Child's Question
Do you ask what the birds say?
The sparrow, the dove,
The linner and thrush say, "I love and I love!"
In the winter they're silent - the wind is so strong;
What is says, I don't know, but it sings a loud song.
But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,
And singing, and loving - all come back together.
But the lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he-
"I love my Love, and my Love loves me!"
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The sparrow, the dove,
The linner and thrush say, "I love and I love!"
In the winter they're silent - the wind is so strong;
What is says, I don't know, but it sings a loud song.
But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,
And singing, and loving - all come back together.
But the lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he-
"I love my Love, and my Love loves me!"
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Friday 5 August 2011
Moby Dick; or, The Whale, by Herman Melville.
Chapter 50 - Ahab's Boat and Crew. Fedallah
"Who would have thought it, Flask!" cried Stubb; "if I had but one leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole with my timber toe. Oh! he's a wonderful old man!"
"I don't think it so strange, after all, on that account," said Flask. "If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing. That would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of the other left, you know."
"I don't know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel."
Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering the paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it is right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active perils of the chase. So Tamerlane's soldiers often argued with tears in their eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the thickest of the fight.
But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of dancer; considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought not.
Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little of his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving his orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt- above all for Ahab to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat's crew, he well knew that such generous conceits never entered the heads of the owners of the Pequod.
Therefore he had not solicited a boat's crew from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head. Nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own touching all that matter.
Until Cabaco's published discovery, the sailors had little foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a little while out of port, all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting the whaleboats for service; when some time after this Ahab was now and then found bestirring himself in the matter of making thole-pins with his own hands for what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow: when all this was observed in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an extra coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for bracing the knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was observed how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the carpenter's chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there; all these things, I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity at the time.
But almost everybody supposed that this particular preparative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of Moby Dick; for he had already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster in person. But such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any boat's crew being assigned to that boat.
Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned away; for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck, oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin to chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle.
But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like this, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be linked with Ahab's peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort of a half-hinted influence; Heaven knows, but it might have been even authority over him; all this none knew, but one cannot sustain an indifferent air concerning Fedallah.
He was such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent- those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth's primal generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and to what end; when though, according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Robbins, indulged in mundane amours.
"I don't know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel."
Among whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering the paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it is right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active perils of the chase. So Tamerlane's soldiers often argued with tears in their eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the thickest of the fight.
But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of dancer; considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the joint-owners of the Pequod must have plainly thought not.
Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think little of his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving his orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt- above all for Ahab to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat's crew, he well knew that such generous conceits never entered the heads of the owners of the Pequod.
Therefore he had not solicited a boat's crew from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head. Nevertheless he had taken private measures of his own touching all that matter.
Until Cabaco's published discovery, the sailors had little foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a little while out of port, all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting the whaleboats for service; when some time after this Ahab was now and then found bestirring himself in the matter of making thole-pins with his own hands for what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even solicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow: when all this was observed in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an extra coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for bracing the knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was observed how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the carpenter's chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a little there; all these things, I say, had awakened much interest and curiosity at the time.
But almost everybody supposed that this particular preparative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the ultimate chase of Moby Dick; for he had already revealed his intention to hunt that mortal monster in person. But such a supposition did by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any boat's crew being assigned to that boat.
Now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned away; for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck, oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin to chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle.
But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like this, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be linked with Ahab's peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort of a half-hinted influence; Heaven knows, but it might have been even authority over him; all this none knew, but one cannot sustain an indifferent air concerning Fedallah.
He was such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent- those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth's primal generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and to what end; when though, according to Genesis, the angels indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Robbins, indulged in mundane amours.
Thursday 4 August 2011
Wednesday 3 August 2011
In a Magic Garden....
http://www.poultonhall.co.uk/TheGardens.html
The Pirate Ship (recalling Roger Lancelyn Green's fondness for J.M Barrie's Peter Pan - in which he acted and about which he wrote a definitive stage history).
The Sword in the Stone, made by Sean Rice (now best known for the Stations of the Cross made for the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool). This recalls Roger Lancelyn Green's influential book about King Arthur.
In the Conservatory there are pictures of the gardens taken before and during the restoration, and the millennium Lancelyn Green Textile Hanging, designed by Su Jones. This is an original work in three panels reflecting some of the history of the house and interests of the inhabitants.
In 2001 a special sundial garden for the visually impaired, designed by Judith Railton, was installed in the Walled Garden with help from the Rotary Club of Bebington. It has been newly replanted by Chris Davis. Its theme is taken from an original children's book by Roger - The Land of the Lord High Tiger. The characters of Leo, Foxy, Squit Squirrel and the Phoenix from the story can be seen on the bench carved by Jim Heath, and a life size wizard, made by Leigh Stanley, presides over the sundial. The gardens were selected as the Cheshire Life Garden of the Year in 2001 and in 2002 the garden celebrated 21 years of opening in aid of the Scheme. We are very grateful to our gardeners, and especially to those who take on so much voluntary weeding and planting, who tend the front lawns, wild-flower meadow and shrubbery, do the teas, and organise the parking.
The Pirate Ship (recalling Roger Lancelyn Green's fondness for J.M Barrie's Peter Pan - in which he acted and about which he wrote a definitive stage history).
The Sword in the Stone, made by Sean Rice (now best known for the Stations of the Cross made for the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool). This recalls Roger Lancelyn Green's influential book about King Arthur.
In the Conservatory there are pictures of the gardens taken before and during the restoration, and the millennium Lancelyn Green Textile Hanging, designed by Su Jones. This is an original work in three panels reflecting some of the history of the house and interests of the inhabitants.
In 2001 a special sundial garden for the visually impaired, designed by Judith Railton, was installed in the Walled Garden with help from the Rotary Club of Bebington. It has been newly replanted by Chris Davis. Its theme is taken from an original children's book by Roger - The Land of the Lord High Tiger. The characters of Leo, Foxy, Squit Squirrel and the Phoenix from the story can be seen on the bench carved by Jim Heath, and a life size wizard, made by Leigh Stanley, presides over the sundial. The gardens were selected as the Cheshire Life Garden of the Year in 2001 and in 2002 the garden celebrated 21 years of opening in aid of the Scheme. We are very grateful to our gardeners, and especially to those who take on so much voluntary weeding and planting, who tend the front lawns, wild-flower meadow and shrubbery, do the teas, and organise the parking.
Tuesday 2 August 2011
Aquinas.
Existence as Superior to Essence
Aquinas revolutionized a thousand years of Christian tradition by rejecting Plato in favor of Aristotle.Plato maintained that ultimate reality consists of essence, whereas Aristotle maintained that existence is primary.
For Plato, the world around us that we perceive with our senses contains nothing except impermanent, ever-changing objects.
Plato reasoned that for our observations of the world to count as true knowledge and not just as anecdotal evidence, our minds need to make a conceptual leap from individual instances of things to general ideas.
He concluded that there must be something permanent that lies behind and unites individual existences, and he referred to this something as “essence.”
According to Plato, existence, or the everyday world of objects such as tables, chairs, and dogs, is inherently inferior to essence.
Early church thinkers saw in Plato’s ideas a parallel to their own division of the universe into the inherently imperfect, corrupt world of matter and everyday existence and the perfect and heavenly world of spirit.
Aquinas follows Aristotle in concluding that Plato’s theory is deficient, in part because it is unable to account for the origin of existence and in part because it is unacceptably dismissive of existence.
Holy Scripture states that after each of the six days of Creation, God saw that the fruit of his day’s work was “good” or even “very good.” Furthermore, when Moses asks God how he should refer to him, God responds, “I am that I am,” thereby equating himself with being. In other words, God is pure existence or Being itself.
Aquinas argues that man’s purpose consists exactly in developing himself toward Being, not in attempting to escape Being. In the traditional church view prior to Aquinas, the difference between God and his creatures was one of kind, as existence was something that in itself separated us from God.
In Aquinas’s view, the difference between God and his creatures is one of degree, and we are separate from God insofar as we do not have as much existence as God.
Prior to Aquinas, traditional church thought maintained that existence was the chief impediment to the realization of our spiritual destiny. Aquinas held that our spiritual destiny consists precisely in the enhancement of our existence.
Superlambanana
The Super Lamb Banana was the original work of Japanese-based artist Taro Chiezo.
Commissioned for the Art Transpennine Exhibition of 1998, the sculpture was a controversial, but welcome addition to the public art arena in Liverpool.
Standing an impressive seventeen feet tall and comprised of concrete and steel, the statue first attracted interest from its original position on the Strand.
The unusual artwork was created to warn of the dangers of genetically modified food, whilst being appropriate to the city of Liverpool due to the port's rich history in the trade of lambs and the import of bananas.
Commissioned for the Art Transpennine Exhibition of 1998, the sculpture was a controversial, but welcome addition to the public art arena in Liverpool.
Standing an impressive seventeen feet tall and comprised of concrete and steel, the statue first attracted interest from its original position on the Strand.
The unusual artwork was created to warn of the dangers of genetically modified food, whilst being appropriate to the city of Liverpool due to the port's rich history in the trade of lambs and the import of bananas.
Monday 1 August 2011
Mark Ryden;"Tracing the connections between Bunnies, Bees, and Abe Lincoln" - Mike McGee - 2001
http://www.markryden.com/biography/index.html
What is it that makes Mark Ryden's paintings so engaging? At the crux of his paintings is the surrealist strategy of combining unrelated images to create scenes that could never exist in reality.Dali always claimed that his selection of subject matter was completely random and involved no conscious thought whatsoever.
In 1924, when André Breton wrote the Surrealist Manifesto, the notion of fusing the rationally unrelated was so fresh that the combination of almost any imagery or objects was provocative.
Man Ray produced a startlingly enchanting object by simply putting a row of tacks on the underside of an antique iron. But as the decades have passed Dali's brand of pure surrealism has lost much of its potency. Perhaps it is because reality has become increasingly surreal, but the near ecclesiastical gravity with which the surrealists approached their work in pre-WWII Europe doesn't play the same today.
In contemporary culture pure surrealism's most common, and effective, use is as a strategy to achieve humor in movies.
Ryden has trumped the initial surrealist strategies by consciously choosing subject matter for his paintings that are loaded with cultural connotation. He relies on the irrational to help him achieve intuitive leaps in his combining of subject matter: with dazzling results.
The sheer amount of layered information in each painting also contributes substantially to the impact of his work. But the crowning factor with Ryden is that he is an artist in touch with his time.
The overall look and feel of his paintings and the stuff he finds interesting strikes a resounding cord with contemporary everyman.
Firmly in the foundation of the look and feel of his paintings is the color pink. It is a sweet soft feminine color, it is the baby girl's counterpart to the baby boy's powder blue (another color Ryden likes to use), and it is half of the 1950s hipster combination pink-and-black. Things don't get much better than they do when you're "in the pink," it is also the color of flesh and meat, and pink is a very popular color for bunnies.
Bunnies and bees are curious things. The stuffed variety of bunnies Ryden has a penchant for are generally more soothing than a cup of hot chocolate and provide almost as much security as mommy. Yet there can be something sinister about bunnies. Those frozen facial expressions can be haunting. The anatomy of bees is remarkable as evidenced by the idiom, "bees knees." Bees unquestioningly buzz around doing the bidding of a queen. And somehow they make honey.
In the midst of all this pink and bunnies and bees, Abraham Lincoln keeps popping up in Ryden's paintings. Honest Abe was a self-taught man born in the backwoods of Kentucky. Always a champion for the common folk he was a rail-splitter turned flatboatman-storekeeper-postmaster-surveyor-prairie lawyer cum on-again-off-again politician who became president with less than 40% of the national vote. He led America through its most trying ordeal, the Civil War, and emancipated the slaves. And then on Good Friday in 1865 the actor John Wilkes Booth shot him in the back of the head in the third act of the comedy Our American Cousin at the Ford Theater. He is more icon than human: the pure stuff of legend and enduring fascination.
In the Inspirations section in the back of his book Amina Mundi, Ryden placed Lincoln's photograph aside a headshot photo of a Colonel Sanders statue. Colonel Sanders, born Harland Sanders, opened his original Sanders' Cafe in the rear of a service station in Corbin, Kentucky, in 1929 on his way to becoming the living trademark for the international fast-food empire that is Kentucky Fried Chicken. Even though he died in 1980 he seems as much alive today as he ever did. Like Lincoln, he too is more icon than human.
While Ryden is interested in the two men's fame, he is also interested in their aura and super human status and the circumstances and mechanisms by which it all works. Ryden is fascinated with systems and structures. He confesses that if he weren't an artist he might have been a mathematician or an engineer. Be it fame, quantum mechanics, the Freemason's concept of the interaction of mind and matter, or the Kabala, he muses at structures and symbols and how they go together and what they mean. It is said that although Picasso loved books he never read a book cover to cover. He would just read parts here and there and fill in the blanks intuitively. Ryden, who also has a passion for books, approaches ideas similarly. He may use a detail here and there, the reference in Puella Amino Aureo to gold as the 79th atomic structure in the elemental table for example, but he is more interested in the overall structure and the way the details fit together. He is convinced that there is a cosmology that explains everything and that this explanation has been constant throughout the ages and has been codified in every age. References to the scared and the spiritual abound in his paintings. In our skeptical culture it is not fashionable to believe in anything today. Ryden avoids being dogmatic by suggesting that there are threads of truth found in a wide variety of sources. With cross-referencing and innovative combining of these sources he gives us a fresh spin to old news. Yet his suggestion that there are concrete answers to complex questions hints at old-world sensibilities.
In his book Amina Mundi there is a sepia-tinted black-and-white photograph of Ryden dressed in a suit holding a paintbrush and palette in his hand; he looks like a 19th century gentleman artist. His relationship to the 19th century is not as fanatical as McDermott and McGough, the two contemporary performance artists who have gone so far as to live every aspect of their lives as if they are in a time-warp shunning electricity, plumbing and other modern conveniences, but Ryden has roots in the 19th century.
Perhaps, his most notable characteristic suggestive of the past century is his attention to detail. It took him nearly two years to complete the eight paintings in this exhibition. Taking time to work on things is a luxury few people indulge in our fast paced culture. In the art world craftsmanship has been unfashionable for most of the twentieth century. This erosion of belief in traditional craftsmanship began with the impressionists rejection of academic canons of beauty and painterly practice and was finalized when the Dadaists concluded that after the atrocities that were WWI all Western civilization values had to be summarily rejected on principle. Ryden boldly embraces an old European regard for craftsmanship in both his paintings and the frames for his art. He sometimes uses 19th century style or older antique frames; he even traveled to Thailand to have frames he designed carved by hand. Originally trained as an illustrator, Ryden learned to paint in acrylic. With help from a friend he taught himself to use oil paint. His refined use of oil paint to create meticulous surfaces has been influenced by his observation of academic and classical painting. Another tie to the 19th century is Ryden's interest in Bouguereau.
In Stanford scholar Lorenz Eitner's textbook on 19th century painting, he retells the story of a group of prominent French artists having dinner at a dealer's house about 1890. The group debates who will be remembered as the greatest artist of the late 19th century. Adolphe William Bouguereau was their near unanimous conclusion. The quintessential academic artist Bouguereau was one of the most celebrated artists of his time, but today the impressionists are the most remembered artists of the late 19th century: Bouguereau has been relegated to a historical footnote.
Bouguereau is undoubtably appealing to Ryden as a once famous figure demoted in the shuffle of history. But Ryden also finds interest in Bouguereau's use of composition and his handling of flesh tones and light. One of the signatures of academic painting is the finely finished painterly detail, and, at this, Bouguereau was a master among masters.
Beyond the overt pop culture references in Ryden's work there are layers of art historical references. He mentions in this catalog his nod to Gauguin and Miro in The Magic Circus (Beth), but there are dozens of more subtle references in his work. Neo-classical painters such as David, one of Ryden's favorites, were noted for their shallow pictorial space, a device found in many of Ryden's paintings. Sophia's Mercurial Waters features a classic odalisque pose; Sophia's wanton direct gaze is a visual quote from Manet's Olympia. The flora in Jessica's Hope looks like transplants from a Henri Rousseau painting. Even Ryden's signature seems a distance cousin to Albrecht Dürer's stylized signature.
Another connection Ryden has with other artists is his interest in meat. It was a popular subject matter for 16th and 17th century Dutch and Spanish still life painters. Van Gogh depicted it in some of his paintings. In Un Chien Andalou, Dali and Buñuel's classic surrealist film, a man strains to tug a rope into the camera frame as the camera pans to reveal a piano, two wide-eyed priests, and two cow carcasses attached to the rope being dragged into the scene. Young British artist Damien Hirst shocked audiences with various uses of actual livestock, including a nasty sculptural installation with a real cow carcass and flies encased in thick sheet plastic.
Francis Bacon and others have painted images of cow carcasses. But the early 20th century painter Chaim Soutine's obsession with meat may be the most radical. Soutine, inspired by Goya and Rembrandt's depiction of meat, hung freshly slaughtered carcasses in his studio, much to the chagrin of his neighbors, and splashed the flesh with blood to keep it moist while he painted it - when I visited Ryden's studio I only saw plastic replicas of meat.
Ryden isn't critical of the consumption of meat; he likes to eat meat. He is intrigued by the way meat looks, its significance in the scheme of life, and by the disconnection between the consumption of meat and the reality of its preparation: the act of eating that tasty McDonald's burger occurs light years from the moment the Jersey heifer ambled into the slaughterhouse and felt the electric jolt of a stun gun to the brain. Like many things in Ryden's paintings, all this information is unstated, it just exists somewhere in the background like strange music piped into an elevator.
You're never quite sure just where that strange music is coming from with Ryden, and time references are more than a little blurry too. But clearly there is no future in the magical worlds he paints. Circa 1930s and 40s toy robots and astronauts such as Princess Sputnik are the sum total of his references to the future. Nostalgia has a great appeal today; the certainty of the past is comforting. And Ryden's reveling with the past is one of the keystones of his oeuvre.
He was born in 1963, the year President Kennedy was assassinated and America lost its innocence. Although his paintings defy exact time frames they are thick with allusions to a post-WWII era when the American dream was pregnant with promise: an era any child who came of age in the stark reality of the 70s and 80s would find ripe for veneration.
And for Ryden the past is a huge field begging to be plucked. Nostalgia's greatest pitfall is sloppy sentimentality; Ryden's antidote for this is edgy subject matter and over-the-top juxtaposition of esoteric references. His figure might have big Keane-like eyes and be wearing pink but there's a swastika on the little boy's armband, and next to the tiny pink skull in the background a snake is approaching, and that little girl being pulled by a bunny has a whip in her hand. Perhaps his most comforting alignment with the past is his arcing back to childhood via his rendering of toys and figures in an old-fashioned children's book illustration style. And holding it all together is a distinct sense of play. It is obvious Ryden is having fun.
In his 1928 essay Le Surréalisme et le peinture, André Breton writes, "One day, perhaps, we will see the toys of our whole life, like those of childhood, once more." The surrealists marveled at the child's mind and so does Ryden: "Children are miraculous," he writes.
In that same essay Breton wrote, "The marvels of the earth a hundred feet high, the marvels of the sea a hundred feet deep, have for their witness only the wild eye that when in need of colors refers simply to the rainbow." Ryden, who as a child would draw figures with a third eye, understands Breton's notion of "the wild eye."
Ryden has a "Magic Monkey" that comes to him in the middle of the night and helps him open that eye. And what he sees is a vision uninhibited by the restraints and inhibitions of adulthood. He experiences the freedom to truly see the "rainbow."
Mark Ryden, Incredible! What an Artist! , but? Abe Lincoln? in Art?...mmmmmm!
[Hey! Frank!..Why, is that, 'Hemp', Rope, on, that, Diving Suit?..get it?...Rebel..]
Frank Wu;'
Trek Thunder Kelly - California [Venice]Artist :
interesting....'Presidential'....[Check out, that, White Triangle, Dude..look what, it's pointing at..]
and another....
What is it that makes Mark Ryden's paintings so engaging? At the crux of his paintings is the surrealist strategy of combining unrelated images to create scenes that could never exist in reality.Dali always claimed that his selection of subject matter was completely random and involved no conscious thought whatsoever.
In 1924, when André Breton wrote the Surrealist Manifesto, the notion of fusing the rationally unrelated was so fresh that the combination of almost any imagery or objects was provocative.
Man Ray produced a startlingly enchanting object by simply putting a row of tacks on the underside of an antique iron. But as the decades have passed Dali's brand of pure surrealism has lost much of its potency. Perhaps it is because reality has become increasingly surreal, but the near ecclesiastical gravity with which the surrealists approached their work in pre-WWII Europe doesn't play the same today.
In contemporary culture pure surrealism's most common, and effective, use is as a strategy to achieve humor in movies.
Ryden has trumped the initial surrealist strategies by consciously choosing subject matter for his paintings that are loaded with cultural connotation. He relies on the irrational to help him achieve intuitive leaps in his combining of subject matter: with dazzling results.
The sheer amount of layered information in each painting also contributes substantially to the impact of his work. But the crowning factor with Ryden is that he is an artist in touch with his time.
The overall look and feel of his paintings and the stuff he finds interesting strikes a resounding cord with contemporary everyman.
Firmly in the foundation of the look and feel of his paintings is the color pink. It is a sweet soft feminine color, it is the baby girl's counterpart to the baby boy's powder blue (another color Ryden likes to use), and it is half of the 1950s hipster combination pink-and-black. Things don't get much better than they do when you're "in the pink," it is also the color of flesh and meat, and pink is a very popular color for bunnies.
Bunnies and bees are curious things. The stuffed variety of bunnies Ryden has a penchant for are generally more soothing than a cup of hot chocolate and provide almost as much security as mommy. Yet there can be something sinister about bunnies. Those frozen facial expressions can be haunting. The anatomy of bees is remarkable as evidenced by the idiom, "bees knees." Bees unquestioningly buzz around doing the bidding of a queen. And somehow they make honey.
In the midst of all this pink and bunnies and bees, Abraham Lincoln keeps popping up in Ryden's paintings. Honest Abe was a self-taught man born in the backwoods of Kentucky. Always a champion for the common folk he was a rail-splitter turned flatboatman-storekeeper-postmaster-surveyor-prairie lawyer cum on-again-off-again politician who became president with less than 40% of the national vote. He led America through its most trying ordeal, the Civil War, and emancipated the slaves. And then on Good Friday in 1865 the actor John Wilkes Booth shot him in the back of the head in the third act of the comedy Our American Cousin at the Ford Theater. He is more icon than human: the pure stuff of legend and enduring fascination.
In the Inspirations section in the back of his book Amina Mundi, Ryden placed Lincoln's photograph aside a headshot photo of a Colonel Sanders statue. Colonel Sanders, born Harland Sanders, opened his original Sanders' Cafe in the rear of a service station in Corbin, Kentucky, in 1929 on his way to becoming the living trademark for the international fast-food empire that is Kentucky Fried Chicken. Even though he died in 1980 he seems as much alive today as he ever did. Like Lincoln, he too is more icon than human.
While Ryden is interested in the two men's fame, he is also interested in their aura and super human status and the circumstances and mechanisms by which it all works. Ryden is fascinated with systems and structures. He confesses that if he weren't an artist he might have been a mathematician or an engineer. Be it fame, quantum mechanics, the Freemason's concept of the interaction of mind and matter, or the Kabala, he muses at structures and symbols and how they go together and what they mean. It is said that although Picasso loved books he never read a book cover to cover. He would just read parts here and there and fill in the blanks intuitively. Ryden, who also has a passion for books, approaches ideas similarly. He may use a detail here and there, the reference in Puella Amino Aureo to gold as the 79th atomic structure in the elemental table for example, but he is more interested in the overall structure and the way the details fit together. He is convinced that there is a cosmology that explains everything and that this explanation has been constant throughout the ages and has been codified in every age. References to the scared and the spiritual abound in his paintings. In our skeptical culture it is not fashionable to believe in anything today. Ryden avoids being dogmatic by suggesting that there are threads of truth found in a wide variety of sources. With cross-referencing and innovative combining of these sources he gives us a fresh spin to old news. Yet his suggestion that there are concrete answers to complex questions hints at old-world sensibilities.
In his book Amina Mundi there is a sepia-tinted black-and-white photograph of Ryden dressed in a suit holding a paintbrush and palette in his hand; he looks like a 19th century gentleman artist. His relationship to the 19th century is not as fanatical as McDermott and McGough, the two contemporary performance artists who have gone so far as to live every aspect of their lives as if they are in a time-warp shunning electricity, plumbing and other modern conveniences, but Ryden has roots in the 19th century.
Perhaps, his most notable characteristic suggestive of the past century is his attention to detail. It took him nearly two years to complete the eight paintings in this exhibition. Taking time to work on things is a luxury few people indulge in our fast paced culture. In the art world craftsmanship has been unfashionable for most of the twentieth century. This erosion of belief in traditional craftsmanship began with the impressionists rejection of academic canons of beauty and painterly practice and was finalized when the Dadaists concluded that after the atrocities that were WWI all Western civilization values had to be summarily rejected on principle. Ryden boldly embraces an old European regard for craftsmanship in both his paintings and the frames for his art. He sometimes uses 19th century style or older antique frames; he even traveled to Thailand to have frames he designed carved by hand. Originally trained as an illustrator, Ryden learned to paint in acrylic. With help from a friend he taught himself to use oil paint. His refined use of oil paint to create meticulous surfaces has been influenced by his observation of academic and classical painting. Another tie to the 19th century is Ryden's interest in Bouguereau.
In Stanford scholar Lorenz Eitner's textbook on 19th century painting, he retells the story of a group of prominent French artists having dinner at a dealer's house about 1890. The group debates who will be remembered as the greatest artist of the late 19th century. Adolphe William Bouguereau was their near unanimous conclusion. The quintessential academic artist Bouguereau was one of the most celebrated artists of his time, but today the impressionists are the most remembered artists of the late 19th century: Bouguereau has been relegated to a historical footnote.
Bouguereau is undoubtably appealing to Ryden as a once famous figure demoted in the shuffle of history. But Ryden also finds interest in Bouguereau's use of composition and his handling of flesh tones and light. One of the signatures of academic painting is the finely finished painterly detail, and, at this, Bouguereau was a master among masters.
Beyond the overt pop culture references in Ryden's work there are layers of art historical references. He mentions in this catalog his nod to Gauguin and Miro in The Magic Circus (Beth), but there are dozens of more subtle references in his work. Neo-classical painters such as David, one of Ryden's favorites, were noted for their shallow pictorial space, a device found in many of Ryden's paintings. Sophia's Mercurial Waters features a classic odalisque pose; Sophia's wanton direct gaze is a visual quote from Manet's Olympia. The flora in Jessica's Hope looks like transplants from a Henri Rousseau painting. Even Ryden's signature seems a distance cousin to Albrecht Dürer's stylized signature.
Another connection Ryden has with other artists is his interest in meat. It was a popular subject matter for 16th and 17th century Dutch and Spanish still life painters. Van Gogh depicted it in some of his paintings. In Un Chien Andalou, Dali and Buñuel's classic surrealist film, a man strains to tug a rope into the camera frame as the camera pans to reveal a piano, two wide-eyed priests, and two cow carcasses attached to the rope being dragged into the scene. Young British artist Damien Hirst shocked audiences with various uses of actual livestock, including a nasty sculptural installation with a real cow carcass and flies encased in thick sheet plastic.
Francis Bacon and others have painted images of cow carcasses. But the early 20th century painter Chaim Soutine's obsession with meat may be the most radical. Soutine, inspired by Goya and Rembrandt's depiction of meat, hung freshly slaughtered carcasses in his studio, much to the chagrin of his neighbors, and splashed the flesh with blood to keep it moist while he painted it - when I visited Ryden's studio I only saw plastic replicas of meat.
Ryden isn't critical of the consumption of meat; he likes to eat meat. He is intrigued by the way meat looks, its significance in the scheme of life, and by the disconnection between the consumption of meat and the reality of its preparation: the act of eating that tasty McDonald's burger occurs light years from the moment the Jersey heifer ambled into the slaughterhouse and felt the electric jolt of a stun gun to the brain. Like many things in Ryden's paintings, all this information is unstated, it just exists somewhere in the background like strange music piped into an elevator.
You're never quite sure just where that strange music is coming from with Ryden, and time references are more than a little blurry too. But clearly there is no future in the magical worlds he paints. Circa 1930s and 40s toy robots and astronauts such as Princess Sputnik are the sum total of his references to the future. Nostalgia has a great appeal today; the certainty of the past is comforting. And Ryden's reveling with the past is one of the keystones of his oeuvre.
He was born in 1963, the year President Kennedy was assassinated and America lost its innocence. Although his paintings defy exact time frames they are thick with allusions to a post-WWII era when the American dream was pregnant with promise: an era any child who came of age in the stark reality of the 70s and 80s would find ripe for veneration.
And for Ryden the past is a huge field begging to be plucked. Nostalgia's greatest pitfall is sloppy sentimentality; Ryden's antidote for this is edgy subject matter and over-the-top juxtaposition of esoteric references. His figure might have big Keane-like eyes and be wearing pink but there's a swastika on the little boy's armband, and next to the tiny pink skull in the background a snake is approaching, and that little girl being pulled by a bunny has a whip in her hand. Perhaps his most comforting alignment with the past is his arcing back to childhood via his rendering of toys and figures in an old-fashioned children's book illustration style. And holding it all together is a distinct sense of play. It is obvious Ryden is having fun.
In his 1928 essay Le Surréalisme et le peinture, André Breton writes, "One day, perhaps, we will see the toys of our whole life, like those of childhood, once more." The surrealists marveled at the child's mind and so does Ryden: "Children are miraculous," he writes.
In that same essay Breton wrote, "The marvels of the earth a hundred feet high, the marvels of the sea a hundred feet deep, have for their witness only the wild eye that when in need of colors refers simply to the rainbow." Ryden, who as a child would draw figures with a third eye, understands Breton's notion of "the wild eye."
Ryden has a "Magic Monkey" that comes to him in the middle of the night and helps him open that eye. And what he sees is a vision uninhibited by the restraints and inhibitions of adulthood. He experiences the freedom to truly see the "rainbow."
Mark Ryden, Incredible! What an Artist! , but? Abe Lincoln? in Art?...mmmmmm!
[Hey! Frank!..Why, is that, 'Hemp', Rope, on, that, Diving Suit?..get it?...Rebel..]
Frank Wu;'
Cover art for the program book for the Radcon 2006 sci-fi convention, where I was Artist Guest of Honor.
The theme of the convention was "alternative history" (what didn't happen), and Writer Guest of Honor, my pal, Jay Lake and I were discussing what creative thing we might do for this. I said, what if we do Abraham Lincoln on the Moon? And Jay said, OK, but only if Lincoln's a zombie and the South won the Civil War.
Thus we have the illustration we see here.
Jay wrote a story for this - called "The Last Familiar Thing" - which is available if you can get your hands on a copy of the Radcon program book, or if you pony up the bucks for the Greetings from Lake Wu (stories by Jay, art by me) special edition.
Also, you'll notice that in the image above, Lincoln doesn't have his signature stovetop hat. It was a last minute addition after I re-read the story and realized I'd forgot to put it in - which was important, since the hat is the titular "Last Familiar Thing."
Thus, I give you:
Zombie Lincoln on the Moon!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Another Excellent Artist;
Trek Thunder Kelly - California [Venice]Artist :
interesting....'Presidential'....[Check out, that, White Triangle, Dude..look what, it's pointing at..]
and another....
and, how about , this one, called, [aptly]'California Cheese!'.....
Abraham Lincoln?..[The 'Hemp', Smoker?]I ,can, explain, but ,I'm ,not going to.
Ha Ha! It's, great ,to see...California, still, has, some, Genuine, Talent!
[Not, like,some, who,just ,copy stuff, out, of ,Psychology Books, etc, I, can ,name ,a,few , of, those!,
....Mr Ryden, Freud? ...Haha.....another, 'kidder'...
Need ,some, 'Therapy', Mark?.I, am, available,My Price? , One Hundred and Sixty Five, Thousand Dollars, Cash!
[non-refundable]
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If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I ...
