Nature & The Contemplative Life

Mendocino Coast 1986 [Silver Gelatin Print, 8x10 Contact Print]

In the 19th Century, Romantic poets idolized Nature (with a capital N), thinking to invest it with generative and salubrious meanings for humankind. The Industrial Revolution set man at odds with nature, as scientific advances promised an actual perfection of human life through the taming and subduing of a raw cosmos. But science also brought destruction, and the deeper apprehensions of our real place in the universal scheme, one in which we were but one minute piece in a gigantic puzzle, beyond our ability to control or even to comprehend. And the production system was dehumanizing, putting man into a subsidiary position with respect to work, and the fruits of labor.

An idealized Nature has been at the heart of a number of pantheistic visions of the world, and of man's place in it. In the East as in the West, men of discernment have sought to find in a steady, careful observation and consideration of natural phenomena, a consoling interconnection between our higher mental faculties, and the diversity and persistence, the fragility and strength, the mystery and simplicity, and the complexity and unpredictability of the natural world. Nature was the expression of primary structure and force. But our sense of it, beyond the intuitive, was limited by our ability to codify our understanding through language, and to find adequate means to synthesize and summarize our knowledge. Higher kinds of language, such as mathematics and symbolic logic, might provide more accurate versions, but tended towards the formulaic. Formulae are human shorthand models of principle, and can be so difficult to understand that the real audience for them is tiny.

On the intuitive level, where our complex brains perceive and comprehend phenomena on a non-rational or supra-rational platform, language fails completely to provide us with a handle on our sensations. Brain research suggests that our consciousness is a very complex affair in which the suspended self is surrounded by millions of impressions and memories and incoming flows of data, constantly in flux and continuously adjusting to influences of many different kinds. In other words, being in our brains, which is literally where human consciousness resides (in a body), constitutes an (internal) environment at least as complicated as anything we "perceive" in the "external world." The mind is an analogue for the world's density and buzz, which is what enables us to sense its mysterious qualities.

I'm not religious, but what religion habitually attempts to address is, at least in principle, the same problems faced by higher physics and mathematics. Organized religion often serves the purpose of providing less curious and inquiring minds with convenient forms of universal definition, since the average person has neither the need nor the desire to know more about the meaning of life beyond a few simple prayers (or mantras), and a consolation for death and suffering.

Nature by and large isn't comforting and helpful, as the Romantics liked to imagine. It's cold, and empty, and immense, and filled with danger and competing agency. Life perseveres in its various manifestations through aggression, defense, and busy reproduction. One may assign happy significances to bravery, careful planning, and love, but these fictions beg the case.

Light falling on a gnarled trunk in a quiet corner of a coastal forest on a sunny day in Spring may suggest in its quotidian aspect a restfulness and inviting shelter, but all of the forces which determine the formal unfolding of time, of life evolving and subsisting, are present, because those principles apply everywhere. Man isn't separate from nature, though he may like to believe that at times. We can construct a sense of our custodial husbandry of the natural world, based on an altruistic vision of a perfectible human paradise. But that's not what ecology, as a purposeful pursuit, reveals. Responsible attitudes toward the environment are mediations between what is, and what ought to be.

Nature once seemed limitless and foreboding. We now find that that sense of it, a provisional reaction in the face of its extent and power, may have been truer than the one we now pretend, of having superior leverage over the natural world. No matter how efficient our manipulations, no matter how far our understanding of the universe may penetrate, we're still dwarfed by its larger significance. Acceptance and capitulation may be spiritually convenient, but they're only makeshift strategies.

We still have to get up in the morning and hunt for a meal, if only by opening the icebox. The universe itself is one very big icebox, just how big we don't really know.

Anecdote #11904T

Then there was my TA for the introductory course in Physical Anthropology, which consisted primarily of memorizing all the bones in the human body--all 206 of them. Sections of the large lecture class were broken up into groups of about 12, which met once or twice a week during the term, in small classrooms. The TA's were graduate students, earning tuition money by practicing on freshman. Our TA was Christina Milner--not a name known to me at the time. Our section included most of the varsity defensive line--very big chunky guys with crewcuts, whose claims to academic proficiency were pretty flimsy. Each one had a "handler"--another student assigned to assist him with his course-work, so he didn't flunk out. They were fun-loving guys who enjoyed getting drunk and generally making merry. Classes bored them. But the first section meeting changed all that.

Milner and her husband Richard were working on a book--perhaps an expansion of their graduate thesis projects--devoted to the world of prostitution. They carried on their "research" in San Francisco, along Columbus Avenue--notorious for its "Barbary Coast" strip clubs and street action. The book they eventually published, Black Players, purported to be a serious sociological study of the African American pandering which took place in the North Beach area.

Milner was a tall redhead, and in order to facilitate her research from the inside, she worked as a stripper in one of the clubs, billed as "Montana Red." Never having visited a strip club in my life, I presume this must have meant that she performed nude, or at least topless, since "topless" was the big draw on North Beach in those days.

In any case, at the first section meeting, Milner appeared in a skimpy pink mini-dress and net stockings, with a big handful of necklaces around her shoulders. Was she wearing a feather boa? She might have been. Long red curls. Sashaying walk. Meaningful smile. She introduced herself, then proceeded to walk around to the front of the desk, taking a position before the front row of seats. She got up on the desk, crossing and re-crossing her legs, not more than five feet from the four huge linemen who sat before her. Grunts of surprise and approval. She had definitely gotten their attention.

Our sessions in the following weeks were hilarious theatre. I suspect that the linemen had been assigned to Milner's section deliberately, since it was felt they'd pay more attention to her discussions than to another dry-as-dust graduate student. Red Milner thoroughly appreciated the exhibitionistic innuendos she created in those section meetings, as did the linemen.

Two years later, the Milners published Black Players, the pop exposé they'd been working on. Not long after this, the Milners parted, and pursued somewhat different paths. Mr. Milner nowadays performs his "musical" version of Charles Darwin, while Christina teaches anthropology at Santa Rosa Junior College, while working as a singer and dancer on the side.

The college lineman probably giggle when they recall their anthropology TA.

I, however, wasn't much interested in bones in those days, though I did manage to memorize the 206 names. I was taking the class pass-fail, so I didn't put much effort into it. Milner threatened to flunk me, but if she was passing the linemen, she could hardly have justified that.

Anecdote #11526G

Then there was the story—apocryphal but supposedly true—of the British poet who’d had a fetish for nylon panties during the 1960’s, and later had published a limited edition of a book of his poems, each bound in a pair of the purloined lingerie of past conquests. This was the era, remember, of Peter Max and Milton Glaser, of the Flower Generation and the Psychedelic Age.

Janacek's 1.X.1905 Piano Sonata

Leos Janáček

One of my favorite keyboard works is the opus 1.X.1905 1 Piano Sonata, by Leos Janáček[1854-1928]. Janacek was a Czech, better known perhaps for his operatic works, which established his fame later in his life. The 1905 Sonata is a stirring work, by turns stridently militant and suavely lyrical. It's impossible not to hear in it an undercurrent of longing, resignation and remorse. It's been interpreted as a reaction to the death of a young Czech during a university demonstration in 1905, so presumably it has a clear political context. Janáček's major piano works were written during a time of political and emotional strife. It was a decade filled with political suppression, multiple deaths, and a search for artistic validation. Sonata 1. X. 1905 is a musical representation of Janacek's staunch political views, connoting his frustrations as a provincial composer.

Usually, works inspired by political feeling fail aesthetically, since they're formally compromised by the desire to summon martial sentiments or simplistic partisan pretexts. National anthems or fighting songs may be inspiring to those who subscribe to the intended, preferred sentimental purpose. But serious classical works based on national or folk causes may fair better. Beethoven, or (especially) Chopin come to mind. In central or northern Europe there are the examples of Bartok, Kodaly, and Smetana.

The precise meaning to be assigned to any moving piece of "pure music" is difficult to establish conclusively. Many of the pieces written by Russian composers during the Soviet Era have ambiguous significance--either because they are felt to be superfluous to their initial impetus--or because they may be trivialized by the association. Prokofiev and Shostakovich both suffered at the alter of political correctness.

Janáček intended this composition to be a tribute to a worker named František Pavlík (1885–1905), who, on the date indicated by the title (1 October 1905), had been bayoneted during demonstrations calling for support for a Czech university in Brno. In the work, Janáček expresses his disapproval with the violent death of the young carpenter. He started to compose it immediately after the incident occurred and finished its composition in January 1906. The première took place on 27 January 1906 in Brno (Friends of the Arts Club), with Ludmila Tučková at the piano. Janáček also wrote a third movement, a funeral march, which he cut out and burned shortly before the first public performance of the piece in 1906.

Janáček was not satisfied with the rest of the composition either and later tossed out the manuscript of the two remaining movements into the river Vltava. He later commented with regret about his impulsive action: "And it floated along on the water that day, like white swans"--certainly a mournfully romantic image!

The composition remained lost until 1924 (the year of Janáček’s seventieth birthday), when Tučková announced that she owned a copy. The renewed premiere took place on 23 November 1924 in Prague, under the title 1. X. 1905. Janáček later accompanied the work with the following inscription: "The white marble of the steps of the Besední dům in Brno. The ordinary labourer František Pavlík falls, stained with blood. He came merely to champion higher learning and has been slain by cruel murderers." The first authorized printed edition of the work was published in 1924 by the Hudební matice in Prague. The Dutch composer Theo Verbey made an orchestral version of 1.X.1905, which received its premiere on 9 May 2008 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with the Dutch Radio Filharmonisch Orkest.

The two movements of the sonata are Foreboding (con moto), and Death (adagio). 2 The first movement is filled with halting, staccato gestures which have a kind of adolescent, indignant passion about them, with an intermittent sostenuto figure going in the left hand, the theme emerging over and over in the right. The second movement is exquisitely lyrical, continuing the passionate figure of the first, but with meditative pauses and rhetorical questionings. As thematic material, it could as easily have served as a love song--which raises the issue of programmatic material versus "pure" musical content. Clearly, there are certain kinds of music which could not be easily mistaken for a "wrong" underlying meaning. A sprightly dance by Grieg could never be taken as a funeral march for a fallen comrade. But in the political context, there is usually an ambiguity.

1.X.1905 is definitely a young man's music (albeit when the composer was in his forties), filled with over-arching conviction and a fatal longing. But how do we splice the meanings inherent in the music? The fervency we associate with nativist or revolutionary political inspiration could as well stand for the intensity of immature sexual passion. When I was 19, I was as ready to be swept up in an all-encompassing cause as I was likely to be seduced by an attractive mate. These kinds of feelings are common to youth. The purposes to which such feelings may be put may be more about opportunity than clear distinction. Young revolutionaries may be coldly rational, or passionately affectionate. But Janáček's Sonata is about his indignation and protest for an innocent, not a soldier or a fully committed partisan.

And then there's the romantic acting-out of his depressive act to destroy the work, only to have it resurface a decade later. We love these kinds of romantic gestures, later imperiously rejected, but then saved from oblivion by fickle fate. The Sonata has a spontaneous quality which, for me, transcends questions about its ultimate instigation. Music like this may suggest many kinds of emotion--but it's the quality of the feeling, as Pound said, which is most convincing. We were all young once, subject to intensities of commitment, sudden shifts of engagement. In later age, our early convictions may be tempered, but the memory of those early passions doesn't evaporate. The desire to experience romantic longing may be as genuine and authentic as the longing itself. The Romantics are often accused of being in love with remorse and impossible commitments, since these facilitated the fashionable mournfulness they loved. Perhaps Janáček's initial despondency to reject the work has a symbolic theatricality about it. Nevertheless, it rings true--it's all in the quality of the work itself. For those susceptible to its charm, this will always be a sufficient pretext to appreciation.

________________

1. Performance, on YouTube, of the first movement ("From the Street").

2. Performance, on YouTube, of the second movement ("Death").

White Sands

White Sands (1988) [8x10 Platinum-Palladium Print]

White Sands, New Mexico has been a pilgrimage destination for serious photographers for nearly a century. Brett Weston traveled there after leaving the service in the late 1940's, and created a portfolio which is among the wonders of post-war image-making. I first went there myself to photograph in the late 1980's, lugging my 8x10 Deardorff around the sandy bluffs. (The photograph above is one I made during my first visit, which I later contact printed in platinum-palladium emulsion.) White Sands is now a National Monument, and is run according to strict rules. Unfortunately, the park opens well after sunrise, and closes before sundown, making serious art photography difficult, since the best shots are only possible when the light is horizontal, creating shadows on the mercilessly white sheet of sand, which at midday provides almost no variation of tones. Nevertheless, it's still possible to make interesting compositions out of the desert flora, which hugs the slopes and depressions. This desert foliage is less common in other dune sites of the West, which is one of its attractions.

In the 1940's and 1950's, when Brett Weston was active there, I doubt he had to deal with any of these nuisances. The biggest problem then would have been the risks involved in wandering alone in the outback, since there would have been no one to rely on in the event of an accident or unexpected injury, unless one were accompanied. As civilization has spread relentlessly across the globe, many of the nicer places to photograph have become dearer, and harder to access. Brett made amazing compositions, as these samples attest:

Weston preferred very large format in those days, as I did when I first took up landscape photography seriously in 1985.

This could be me, in 1988, though of course it's Brett Weston, almost certainly somewhere among sand dunes--though this shot might have been taken in any of several sandy places.

Sand is a poetic substance, constantly shifting, sensual, restless, sleek. Our desire to capture its changing moods feels primordial. Before the advent of cameras, did people appreciate the dreamy abstractions created by the unidirectional light playing across the graceful slopes, the ribs and waves, contrary patterns of sand dunes? Or did they seem barren, meaningless humps of lifeless matter, whose consistency and fragile formations held no key to the purposes of life or the ulterior codes of universal meaning? We shall never know, since there are no recorded instances--at least that I am aware of--which document humankind's aesthetic regard for the shifting sands. The sands of time is a stale old chestnut, but like many such phrases, it carries a grain of truth. A grain of sand on the shore of time. Count their number, like unto the stars of heaven.

The One That Got Away - Elusive New Cocktail

Have you ever tried to catch a rabbit? Darned hard, I'll say. They're not only extremely fast, but they move unpredictably from one direction to another, which makes them doubly elusive. That's a survival technique, honed into them over hundreds of thousands of years of running from predators.

Their other strategy, of course, is to rapidly reproduce. It's the old joke, rabbits copulating and filling up their ecological niche with despatch. Cute little buggers, and vegetarians too. But they can quickly get out of hand. And, as Mr. McGregor knew, a danger to your garden. Peter liked that lettuce and those juicy carrots!

The one that got away is every person's dream of the perfect match. When two people meet in the course of life, they may have a momentary recognition of possibility, but be distracted or pulled apart by forces that seem inevitable. Later, years later, they may shake their heads ruefully, imagining what might have been. Who you stay, or hook up, with goes a long way towards determining the kind of life you will have. Some people marry several times, or go through a series of dead-end, wrong-turn, relationships. I've been married for over 40 years, and have no regrets. But I've never caught a rabbit, or even a greased pig. Some things remain stubbornly elusive.

Here's a cocktail with a lovely elusive flavor--elusive because if you didn't know what was in it, you would never guess the ingredients. Which is a fun game--trying to guess what may be in a drink, if you don't know beforehand. Those taste-buds can be very unreliable reporters of flavor. Flavor, as I've remarked before here, is a very subtle sense. We know the usual individual segments--salt, sweet, bitter, sourness--with the addition, perhaps, of savoriness and piquancy. But enough of theory. Try this one on yourself, and then on a friend. But don't tell them what's in it. Make them guess. It's tantalizingly seductive.

The mixture, as always, by proportion--

4 parts Boodles gin

2 parts cocktail grapefruit

1 part maraschino liqueur

1 part créme de bananae

Shaken gently and served up in a chilled cocktail glass.

That tantalus!

Dismantling Romney

The field of Republican hopefuls this cycle appears among the very worst in history. Mitt Romney, who failed in a nomination bid in 2008, this time looks like the odds-on bet to win the race to the ticket. The story this time has been the reluctance with which Republican party members have regarded him, thinking perhaps that his "moderate" stance on certain issues makes him unacceptably mild. The Republican sentiment has been drifting right for several years, but its failure to find a decent candidate may be a symptom of its political isolation. There are few politicians who will will admit publicly to the sort of radical policy positions the Tea Party movement supports.

But of course Romney's views, though not intended to be seen as far right, are in fact extremely conservative. His sole claim to suitability, aside from the fact that he's a devout Mormon (going several generations back), stems from his successful participation in the corporate buy-out firm Bain Capital, a firm he started and ran from 1984 to 1999. Romney has boasted about his success at Bain, and used that to promote himself as a business-savvy manager, as "America's CEO" able to husband the country through its current debt crisis and restore American prosperity and jobs. His business experience is offered as the proof and promise of this potential Presidential fulfillment.

Most Americans were unfamiliar with the kind of financial dealings Romney's firm engaged in. But the recent financial crisis on Wall Street, fueled by shady dealings and inflated salaries, has made it clear that regulation is needed in a number of areas, to prevent the irresponsible activity which led to the collapse. The traditional model for capitalist entrepreneurial spirit is to start new businesses, using investment capital to feed into expansion. But there is another side to capital investment, and that involves engineering declines and bankruptcies in areas which are under pressure or experiencing temporary periods of decline.

Americans have been given dramatizations of the negative side of capital investment in two very popular movies:

Pretty Woman, a 1990 "romantic comedy" starring Richard Gere as the corporate raider, and Julia Roberts, as the Los Angeles hooker he hooks up with. Gere plays Edward Lewis, who buys ailing companies, selling off their assets, and closing them down, leaving their employees out in the cold.

Wall Street [1987] was a dramatic portrayal of the involvement of young Bud Fox (Martin Sheen), a stock trader, with Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), a ruthless corporate shark. At first compliant with Gekko's fraudulent schemes and inside trading, eventually Bud rebels against his plan to buy Bud's father's (Charlie Sheen) airline company and break it up for cash, liquidating the employees' pension fund and leaving them unemployed.

Generally speaking Hollywood usually portrays making fast money as the sexiest fun of all, though there is a deep undercurrent of guilt and remorse in most get rich quick movies. Mitt Romney hardly looks the part of the unscrupulous corporate raider, seducing unsuspecting investors and company managements into unseemly alliances and risky schemes, but that's exactly what he did with Bain Capital during his tenure. He made millions and millions of dollars in profits and "compensation" there, and sent much of it to Caribbean havens to avoid American taxation.

For those who may still be unfamiliar with how private equity firms conduct leveraged buyouts and "ailing company acquisitions" it's roughly like this: the "investment" firm (such as Bain) drums up cash from ambitious (and unscrupulous) investors who want to make a fast buck, and don't care how it's done. The firm identifies ailing companies which are experiencing hard times, but which may have underlying assets which are "untapped." These assets may take the form of (real) properties, licenses and copyrights and exclusive patents, employee compensation funds, or manufacturing materiel (machinery etc.). When a firm is in trouble, its management may be under fire; if there's a board of directors, there may be conflict over what the best course of action may be; the company is vulnerable to influence. The "investment" firm (corporate raiders) comes in with cash and either begins to acquire an increasing stake in the firm's stock holdings, or makes an outright offer to take the firm over. Ostensibly, the purpose of such take-over is to reorganize and realign the company so that it prospers and finds new life in the marketplace. Doing it this way would be an honest attempt at saving something worth saving, and preserving the livelihood it gives to its employees (and investors).

But it seldom works that way, because there's little potential profit in coming in to save a company on purely altruistic grounds, because the risk isn't repaid by the potential. Smart, but unscrupulous, private equity raiders know that the quickest way to make a fast buck is to come in to a company, acquire control, cut expenses, and "streamline" its operation. Faking financial reports and gutting the underlying obligations and securing huge overhanging loans against the equity the company represents, are all tools in this process. The investors take out large allocations of cash as the company is being "turned around." Then, when things seem marginally viable, the investors get out, either dumping all their stock, or selling the company outright to some gullible patsy, leaving a huge debt load. Most companies which have been infected with the private equity virus, unable to pay off the debt, experience a bankruptcy within a few years, or are forced to downsize. In most cases, their temporary "prosperity" was a sham, designed to facilitate liquidation by the investors.

The potential profit to firms like Bain Capital is huge. Once in control of a board, they can allocate to themselves huge payouts in stock or cash--money, in effect, stolen from the company. This isn't "healthy capitalism"--it's legalized fraud and theft. A company with a valuable product or idea may have a real future life of decades of moderate productivity, supporting hundreds or thousands of people, while it serves its customer base loyally and reliably. That potential value--both to the people who make up the company, and to the customers who depend upon them--is what is wiped out for quick profits by corporate raiders.

Romney, a graduate of Harvard Business School, knew where the quick money was, and that's why he got into the "private equity" business in the first place. The interesting thing about Mormons is that no matter how devout and pious they may be inside the church, there's no secular or profane act they may not perform in the real world to support their religious piety. At least with Catholics, you get to confess and be absolved for your sins in the world. But with Mormons, you can be a corporate raider and there's no problem. You can lie, and cheat, and steal, and deceive--and it's all perfectly fine, you're still a good little Mormon after it's said and done.

Listening to Romney, I think to myself that he looks and sounds like a fool. But that's just an illusion of image. He's an ineffective public speaker, and maybe he has trouble keeping his categories straight. You have to lie to the right people at the right time, or you'll get your wires crossed. Who knows what he tells his supporters in private? When your whole modus operandi in business is to deceive everyone--your investors, your buyout targets, and everyone whom you come into contact with, who wants to believe you're honest and fair and above-board--with a straight face, lying may become so familiar, that you literally forget where you've left it. The truth, that is.

Hopefully, America will reject Romney the Corporate Raider. But I've said it many times before: Americans are stupid. Or maybe their credulity is so deep they can't help wanting to believe that people can be so evil that they will lie about anything to get ahead. The desire to believe--it's a religious tendency. But Romney's no saint. He's the wolf in sheep's clothing.