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Reality
May 29, 2008 12:28AM
I had intended to post about something different, and I have Bowienet Member “replicant” to thank for the change in topic. He made a comment in his recent posts about not “getting” the Reality album. I assume he means that he didn’t “connect” with the direction Mr. Bowie was heading in.
Well OK, but what exactly is that direction?
…
Well.
At this point, one can only guess really (including Bowie perhaps, ha ha). But to give it a shot (and trying to be careful lest we shoot it dead): As I told Mr. Replicant on his blog here, I suppose I don't know what Mr. Bowie had in mind personally when he wrote the album--but the title is a good hint. As an entire album concept, it's about the reality of life—how life flashes by, changes come and sometimes not the answers, etc. There’s even a bit of a twist on this question of reality because the cover art is so “unreal” looking for this album. We’ve got a very stylized graphic representation of a person (whom I assume to be Bowie) on the cover with a few artistic squigglies thrown in for good measure. It’s pretty neat to look at, I must say…But what’s it mean exactly?…What?…Do I look like I know or something? Ha ha, well perhaps it’s a statement on what we take as reality is oftentimes…not. Perhaps the cartoonish style emphasizes this, and is meant to jog some kind of search for reality in the individual through a sort of reverse psychology maneuver. It’s sort of a Foucault theme (though I dunno, maybe I’m reaching)—if you bring up the issue (in this case, exchanging a picture of reality for a cartoon while still alarmingly retaining the assertion and title of “Reality”) it will create the issue. Thus people will talk, people will think…and people will come, Ray.
(NOTE about random acts of writing: Yeah, sorry, that film reference really came out of left field…if you see what I mean.)
Anyway, since it’s me “up at bat” right now (Oops, sorry about the silly pun again, I couldn’t help myself, hehe), let me just say that of course, the songs themselves are all usually quite abstract portraits of this search for reality. It would be exceedingly hard to pinpoint the particular message of each song, but let's see, just for fun (gleeful giggle), I suppose I can try to piece together a few elements. I’ll try to keep both Polonius and “brevity is the soul of wit” in mind—especially because I don’t want to be stabbed behind the curtain. And by the way, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” (ha ha), because—as a disclaimer to those who don’t just think they’re smarter than me (ha, as if), but as it astoundingly occurs really ARE smarter than I am—this dissertation is ALL in my OPINION you understand. And opinions have been known to be mistaken and/or miss-something. I like to think, of course, that I’ve hit it on the noggin—but enough. Without further drudging ado, here you are, song by song:
New Killer Star = Come to think of it, I'm picking up apocalypse themes what with the nuclear references. It's about a shock resulting in the reviewing the reality of one's life.
Pablo Picasso = Ah, the price of fame and the place it buys for you! Like Pablo, you too can pick up girls without being called an...well, you know.
(FYI: Bowie didn’t pen this, I believe—a cool song by Jonathan Richman and John Cale—according to Wikipedia.)
Never Get Old = Personally, I'm going to take this song as somewhat sarcastic in its conception...
The Loneliest Guy = See title. Guy's got it all, so why's he still lonely?
Looking for Water = "Looking" is a search, and "water" is refreshment, and meaning, and truth--very nifty!
She'll Drive The Big Car = Hmmm. Middle age crisis while driving the big family car? The "she" looks at her life and glimpses the reality of it? It's charade, temporariness (no, I don’t think that’s even word, but who cares—it is now), sadness, and the disappointment of lost dreams--so she drives faster and turns up the radio to avoid thinking about it. (Maybe?)
Days = OK, I'm out on a limb here as far as what Mr. Bowie was thinking...but to ME this song was immediately a communication with the higher power--with God. Love it yeah!
Fall Dog Bombs The Moon = Your guess is as good as mine, ha ha. For some reason I have visions of dogs in rich business suits and briefcases on their way to the stock exchange--urinating on people's lives, bombing the moon and destroying dreams. "What a dog" indeed!
Try Some, Buy Some = God bless George Harrison (whose song this is). Mr. Harrison is talking about the temptation of the material world always asking to you to "try some" and "buy some." Because it will make you happy won't it? (I think not!) Apparently, Mr. Bowie liked the song and thought (rightly so) that it tied into reality quite nicely.
Reality = Man encounters the temptress embodiment of "tragic youth." Man then tries to hide from her reality (tragic youth, that is) and the reality of her, with a lot of nonsense and wandering about (and drugs). And now that "death is more than just a sad song" and he's "falling in this twilight," he realizes that he's no closer to understanding reality than he was before, and he's still stuck to square one. Oh, who has all the answers?! (Apparently it definitely wasn't tragic youth.)
Bring Me The Disco King = You know what...like all these songs there's a lot here. And like all these songs I don't know if I'm really qualified to comment on them like this. Oh well, too late anyway. What do I see in this song? I see death. I see a ghost. I see a transition out of the material to the spiritual. I see some quiet dreamy confusion and half closed whispers of sensory and memory pictures. I also see that the traveler is with someone and talking to someone…Who calls for the disco king beyond this fading lifetime?
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And now, let’s call it fin, and say it’s been fun, chaps. I’ve had a wonderful time today, and hope you did and do too—Go seek REALITY!!!
Gauranga Gauranga Gauranga,
With love,
Jyoti
PS Sorry these posts always end up so long you almost have to wade through them...ha ha. Oh well.
Heavy Heat and Summer's Here
May 20, 2008 05:56PM
Summer is certainly here--it's about 103 degrees outside.
In honor of that, I thought you might enjoy one of my watercolors of some bricks and geraniums baking in the sun. You never know.
But to really kick off Summer, let's go into the pool season with some wisdom (which is really appropriate any time of year, but this is a good excuse). Getting back to "Listening for Gauranga, And the Om in Every Atma" as well as the "Truth in Fascination" here are some very beautiful translated Sanskrit scriptural quotes from the Bagavad Gita, As It Is that I'm very pleased to share. Very refreshing on such a hot day...
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“As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, similarly, the soul accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.
The soul can never be cut into pieces by any weapon, nor can he be burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.
This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, all-pervading, unchangeable, immovable and eternally the same.”
--Bhagavad Gita As It Is, translated from ancient Sanskrit, Ch. 2, text 22-24
“The Blessed Lord said: While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor the dead.
Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.”
--Bhagavad Gita As It Is, translated from ancient Sanskrit, Ch. 2, text 11-12
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ALOHA to everyone!
Jyoti
Artistic beauty: Inherent or neutral?
May 12, 2008 01:59PM
This is an extended philosophical musing spurred on by a reading of a paper by literary critic Stephen Booth which examined the reasons why we find some plays (namely Shakespeare) better than others. It was very, very exciting to me, this notion of examining the very definition of artistic beauty, and looking at it from all different sorts of thinking angles. Wow. I mean, it was a whole new way and method of thinking—approaching art with philosophy in a much more defining and questioning manner than before! Looking for the origins of thought in artistic perspectives results in looking and thinking about art in a new way. And I just love turning things around and looking at them from a different side! Here follows one direction where this new thinking of mine led:
Artistic beauty: Inherent or neutral?
Perhaps it is a question which does not immediately present itself while perusing a beautiful painting by DaVinci or Picasso, listening to music by Mozart, Beethoveen, or The Beatles, reading Shakespeare, Poe, or Harper Lee, and watching films by Hitchcock or M. Night Shyamalan etc. etc. etc. But (go figure) for some reason it occurred to me: is “beauty” an artistic creation which must sometimes wait to be “found out” by mentalities with the correct kind of reception to see it, or perhaps is artistic “beauty” dependant entirely on its audience for creation? That is to say, is “artistic beauty” inherent or merely a product of perception in a piece of art? The first theory is a notion of “absolute beauty,” and is akin to Plato’s “Theory of Forms” (as referenced in TheologicalStudies.org) that there is an original, perfect example or standard of everything, presumably existing on a higher plane (such as a “perfect chair,” “perfect horse” etc). However, the latter theory would be an example of “beauty in the eye of the beholder,” and would be something along the lines of Foucault’s thinking, that (at least in part) all roles and concepts are an evolving thing which are based more upon prior history and thought than on any natural inherent truth (as referenced in Culler 5-6). As a side note, this idea in particular makes me wonder if in another time and in another era of popular mentality, with different ideas of censorship, I would like some things I don’t like now or if I’d not like some things that I do like now. This is most likely, and also once again this is the question presented—whether artistic beauty is inherent or created by its interpreters. My theory is that ultimately the nature of artistic beauty is composed of both. The inherent beauty of art exists in the original vision and purpose of the artist, and the “neutral” or perception-born beauty exists in the audience’s personal view/insight of that artistic vision.
This is a decidedly vague assertion, however, and has no basis unless we can apply it to some real life example—so we need to find one. To commence that search, and also just so we are on the same page, what exactly do we refer to when we talk about so-called “artistic beauty”? According to Jonathon Culler’s Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction:
Aesthetics is historically the name for the theory of art and has involved debates about whether beauty is an objective property of works of art, or a subjective response of viewers…Aesthetic objects, such as paintings or works of literature, with their combination of sensuous form (colours, sounds) and spiritual content (ideas), illustrate the possibility of bringing together the material and the spiritual. (32)
This I think is an excellent, excellent definition of art, and (in pursuit of our purpose in finding an example upon which to test the proposed theory) literature is certainly one of the chief fields of art. To further recant Kant’s philosophy “a literary work is an aesthetic object because…it engages readers to consider the interrelation between form and content,” (Culler 33). So choosing someone out of the lineup of beloved English literature authors, William Shakespeare in particular is certainly held to be a master of literature with his contributions of his many plays and sonnets. Further narrowing it down to something we can focus on, his play about revenge, betrayal, and inescapable duty, Hamlet, is regarded (today) as an artistic masterpiece and therefore “beautiful.” The critic Terence Hawkes in Meaning by Shakespeare verifies the marvels of Hamlet:
I]t has been transformed into the utterance of an oracle, the lucubration of a sage, the masterpiece of a poet-philosopher replete with transcendent wisdom about the way things are, always have been, and presumably always will be. (4)
Surely, we can accept that this play is held “beautiful. So, let us examine this piece with regards to the previously proposed theory. Is Hamlet just in essence a “beautiful piece,” or is its worth imbued by its interpreters and audience?
The first idea of the theory was that inherent beauty does exist somewhere, but this might be confusing (and it is) because, at the same time, the second idea I asserted was that artistic beauty is mostly created in the minds of the individual and collective audiences. It is therefore tempting to declare that there just is no “absolute” or “essential” beauty in any piece of art. However, I think this would be a mistake, and I do believe inherent beauty exists because I believe in an absolute truth of this world. In life, there are certainly rights and wrongs, and thus…absolute truths. And besides, it stands to reason (and tradition) that an art piece is formulated on a foundation of beauty by the artist in the first place. Though perception of the art’s beauty differs from person to person, artists are usually required to imbue their creation with a strong sense of artistic value and “inherent beauty” to begin with in order for an audience to recognize in it a possibility of beauty at all. Therefore, I conclude (or conjecture, if you prefer) that the inherent “part” of art’s beauty exists in the artist’s vision of that work, the artist’s vision being the original idea and intent.
Now of course, with Hamlet, it is pretty much impossible to really get an idea of what was in Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote this play and what sort of deeper artistic vision he possessed. However, I think we can agree that it was at least there, and if results are any testament to means of creation I’d say William Shakespeare had a relatively detailed and coherent vision of his artistic creation of Hamlet. According to Sean McEvoy’s “Introduction” to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Sourcebook:
Shakespeare wrote nothing quite like it before, nor perhaps after, and it has the feeling of an experimental text. It is a tragedy which is packed with comedy. It is a tense and pacy thriller which can run four hours in performance. It is a play which constantly re-examines itself, and which questions the very nature of theatre and performance,” (1).
Shakespeare’s artistic endeavor with this confirmed finely made and finely tuned play reveals the place where the essential and “inherent beauty” of the work exists—somewhere between the spiritual and material in the scope and vision of the artist. And why? It is the “place” where inherent beauty exists simply and logically enough because the artist’s vision was the first and original concept out of which the art/creation was created.
But how does this prove our theory of the differentiation of beauty as existing in two states? I think we can agree on the idea of inherent beauty being present in the original artist’s vision (Shakespeare’s in this case), but what proof have we that the beauty of an artistic piece for “everyone else” (that is, the audience) is not inherent but exists in personally and publicly imbued perceptions produced by the viewers? The real proof lies in the investigation of this idea of an audience’s holding the power to find the (public) beauty within art at all. Studying this in relation to Hamlet means that we look at the literary criticism history of the play.
It might surprise some people to discover that the critical view of Hamlet has changed very much over the centuries since its being written. Each era of artistic and theatrical style seems to have a different opinion on it, based on the story’s content and certain features of the main characters. In the pre-Romantic era just after Shakespeare’s time, plays were expected to meet a certain code and/or be written for a very specific moral purpose. Thus in an era where the theatrical diet was largely composed of refined, neo-classical, moral and rational drama, Hamlet was considered clumsy and vulgar, particularly in the convoluted character of Hamlet himself, who in their minds should behave perfectly “like a prince” at all times. As described in Hamlet: A Sourcebook, “moral education was an important function of neo-classical drama, and required that a protagonist be uncontroversially virtuous,” (McEvoy 30). In fact, as I gather it, it was really only later, during the Romantic period following the late 1700s when Hamlet’s emotionally and morally complex characters began to intrigue people and to endear themselves to the public because of their identifiable humanity and truths therein. The shift in thought during this period had effect on the perception of the play in that, “the emergent Romantic movement sought to turn away from scientific rationalism and detailed observation of the external world to give ‘natural’ human emotion more priority,” (31). Thus it was particularly during this time, marked with the politically paralyzing crisis of the French revolution, that people really began identifying with Hamlet’s psyche of indecision and his confusion as to “the right course.”
Later on, so-called modern criticism continued to stem mainly from this Romantic view as well, as detailed in McEvoy’s book:
“The romantic emphasis on the individual consciousness was perpetuated in later nineteenth-century Shakespeare criticism, which focused on the individual characters of the plays. In the twentieth century this developed into detailed psychological studies of both of the characters and of the playwright himself.” (33)
Clearly, the critical perception and reception of this play has altered drastically over time, and Hamlet has actually gathered prestige over the decades, for the most part through changing modes of popular thought.
So what may we gather from this? First of all, this historically and sociologically based situation of an artistic offering being denounced in one era and celebrated in another occurs (according to my theory, you understand) because the public beauty of art is dependant on the public audience. We might even break this down a little further saying that the “public audience” appears to operate on two levels, each dependant on each other within a certain point of time. There is the individual self who sees each piece of art with his or her own individual taste and gathers beauty from that creation according to what it specifically means for himself or herself. And, there is also the collective self who sees the world through “eyes of the time” in context with current history and society and will interpret accordingly in keeping with this accepted collective mentality. The collective self is composed of the individual self, and both as I’ve stated thus influence each other. This in short is the nature of artistic beauty through the ages (as seen in the example of Hamlet), and a good argument is thus made for the idea that artistic beauty (as it is held by the rest of the world, not the creator/artist) is formed out of the perceptions and contextual appreciations of the audience.
Summing it up (finally) in a personal way, essential artistic beauty to me is again both inherent and neutral in relation to the individual—me naturally being an individual too. It is inherent because it is certainly there—it is neutral because it can take so many forms in the individual’s mind and heart, for better or for worse. Something can be beautiful in my mind but ugly in another’s mind, and will it influence each accordingly. However, even if it is viewed as ugly by someone, does this make the art-thing any less beautiful if its original conception as a creation was something beautiful? Of course not. I personally do not separate the art from the artist, and this is how something can be inherently beautiful in its essence—the original beauty of something is dependant on its creator. The point is merely that the other (public) level of a piece’s artistic beauty lies in the interpretation of the public audience on both a personal level and a wider general population level. Now, let it be noted that this definition is not to say that the public audience cannot share in the original beauty within its own perception as well, but, by my theory, this is ultimately the basic nature of artistic beauty—as being composed of both the original beauty (the artist’s vision) and perceived beauty (the audience’s perception of that vision).
And now I think I will go read a novel or listen to a song—and not think one bit about why’s it’s beautiful or not, or if it’s intrinsically beautiful, or if its my culturally programmed perception which makes me like it, or what is art and beauty anyway, or…
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Works Cited
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 1997.
Hawkes, Terence. Meaning by Shakespeare. London: Rutledge, 1992.
McEvoy, Sean. (editor) William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, A Sourcebook. Oxon and New York: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group. 2006.
“Plato’s Theory of Forms.” TheologicalStudies.org. 20 Nov 2004. 5 May 2008. <http: //www.theologicalstudies.citymax.com/articles/article/1527417/17138.htm>
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Thank you all!
Gauranga Gopala Govinda Rama
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| Real Name: | Jyoti |
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