Conclusions based on no evidence, stated boldly

The internet makes us feel lonely. Good books, theater, music, make us less lonely. Television makes us dumb.

I don't know why, though I have cockeyed theories. Regardless, I'm keeping myself off the internet except once a day and only checking my email twice a day -- and rarely after 5 p.m. -- and I feel much much better.

Political reporters do not report on the issues because they don't understand the issues. Some of them are dumb. Dumb and smart people exist in all professions in the same percentage as your high school math class. At the same time, in their defense, they have to write a lot of articles for their publications. The reporters who are taking the time to understand the issues don't have the politics beat. Political reporters have no time to get smarter. Also, in truth, their beat isn't the issues. Their beat is explicitly the horse race. That's what they're told to report. Someone else is supposed to cover the issues.

Which would be fine with me if editors would just be more clear about the difference and help us find the issues coverage better and more often.

The Good is the enemy of artistic expression. When you want to make something Good, you are creating external criteria to fulfill rather than expressing what you need to express in its most ideal form. Also, when you think you have made something Good, then you stop learning how to improve. Artistic expression must be characterized by constant failure or you'd just stop doing it at a certain point. . . I've heard people call artists narcissists but perhaps it would be more accurate to call them sado-masochists. The sadism comes from their willingness to perform failure in front of others.

Neuroscience can and should be used to show why live theater is more satisfying than movies. . . I'm sure someone wants to waste some money on that, right? Because studies about neurological diseases can just get boring after a while. I bet that brain scans would show some very interesting things about how the same script when seen on a screen has a different, and less active, affect on the brain than it does when its experienced with live performers in the same room as the audience.

No more. Moving this weekend. Time to pack up my office.

Stuck in my head like a itchy thing

Is there a congressman or woman from Ohio, Florida, or Virginia who is between 50-60 years old, who served in the military but wasn't a lifer, who left as a captain or a major at most, who has run or did run his own business, and who has been in in the house for at least ten-twelve years? Someone who works hard, who everyone respects, but who basically was never going to go any higher because he or she didn't feel like aiming for that brass ring. They'd rather serve their constituents, try to pass a few things, work hard, make serious contributions to the debate, fight some battles, be a good, humble public service without a huge amount of star power -- or at least an inability to leverage their image.

I suppose not but what do I know.

Because, let's say, Obama wants to excite Ohio. Does it matter whether its the Governor, or might be people get even more excited if its a real local favorite son (kind of like Obama was in the State Senate). Does it really matter if the person he chooses for vice president is famous by media standards since by the rest of the world's standards, they aren't famous. I can name the governor of Pennsylvania but can most people? I couldn't name the governor of Ohio until recently and the name keeps slipping out of my mind.

Pick a legislator like himself - someone who just did the work well until circumstances conspired and were conspired -- and by surprising everyone with an unknown (who is of course well-vetted) excite the bejesus out of everyone.

Thought of this a couple days ago and it kept coming back. recognizing its unimportance, I'm trying to exercise it here.

Also, I have to admit that I'm playing a little game with myself to see whether I can predict the vp choic ecorrectly. It's like how some people do crossword puzzles.

At the moment, I think McCain is going to pick Pawlenty.

And Obama I'm still confused about. But I think it would be cool if it was an obscure but highly-regarded man or woman from an important large state -- with a military and business background.

yup. ok. I'm going to bed now.

Good night.

A

A Thought or Questions on Art v. Commerce

Is there a difference between asking an artists "what works" and asking them "what is art"?

Do we strive in the performing arts too often to make something that "works" -- though with the best of intentions. What is your purpose? we ask. What are you trying to say? What do you want the audience to feel? etc., etc., a series of supposedly helpful questions. And then we collaborate to make something "work"

But is that different than making something that is art? OR is art really defined by what works. As in, if you want the audience to cry, to see the injustice of homeless, or contemplate the confusion of the world, then you make art by making that "work," by effecting the audience in the way that you stated?

Does the visual arts concern themselves in the same way with the same audience considerations or is the fact that theater requires a ticket purchase -- does it change the nature of success?

Or have we just lost track of what we're doing. Cause I will go see something if it may be "art" regardless of whether it or not it works -- but I do that because I like the effect of confusion or contemplation or analysis on my mind. So many its just "working" differently on me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can make whatever rational thoughts you want; fuck, anyone who knows me know that I can argue every side of every argument I need to argue. There's always a good argument.

So, in this case, and maybe too going forward, I'm just going to do with this feeling -- We're losing something when we measure success by effect on the audience. Too much concern with product. Not enough concern with intention. or experience. or something that is impossible to define that is labeled by the term art. . . I know the pendulum can swing too far in the other direction too and become insulting and tedious and worthless because no concern is paid for the audience. . . But, at this moment in our culture, we have lost the proper vocabulary for the real creation of art. . . I suspect.

Yeah yeah yeah

It is a pretty cool night. A community organizer and law professor from the south side of chicago, who is black and white, just won the nomination for the presidency -- and he's got a good chance to win. OK, no one needs to read about that here, but I've been searching the web reading shit all night and, well, it's not important but its just kind of nice to think that the future president might also have a little poet in him. From the end of a NYTimes article:

"Mr. Obama nods. That’s intriguing. But he prefers his own riff, which not incidentally trains the eye not on him but on his crowds. “I love when I’m shaking hands on a rope line and”— he mimes the motion, hand over hand — “I see little old white ladies and big burly black guys and Latino girls and all their hands are entwining. They’re feeding on each other as much as on me."

He shrugs; it’s that distancing eye of the author.

“It’s like I’m just the excuse.”

- nice imagery.