a Picasso point building on the previous post

Another incident from Gilot’s book that I forgot to quote in this blog.

At one point Picasso received a telegram from some people in New York (some Americans, some Europeans who had left due to Hitler and stayed there after the war). They were pretty much begging him to make a statement in favor of modern art against some philistine American politicians who were beginning to complain about how bad and stupid modern art is, etc.

Picasso’s response after reading the telegram was fascinating. He said to Gilot that art is threatening, and to pretend that it should gain official recognition from politicians was completely wrongheaded. He also said that freedom of expression is something you seize; it’s not something for which you ask the permission of others. He said a few more eloquent things. Then he thought a little while longer, said that these artists had wasted their money on him, and crumpled up the telegram and threw it into the garbage.

The connection with the previous post is that the things we “get away with” are generally the things we simply seize for ourselves without asking permission. But you can’t just do it indiscriminately, because none of us can do it all the time.

A trivial example… I remember seeing a news show special about a complete non-celebrity who made a career out of sneaking into celebrity parties in Los Angeles and New York. He was never caught. He knew what suits to wear, how to smile, what sort of limousine to rent, how to have just the right look on his face so that people were afraid to ask who he was, etc.

If I tried this, I’d get beaten up by a bouncer for sure. It’s something I could never pull off in ten lifetimes.

The Dunwich Horror

It is too seldom noted that the opening of “The Dunwich Horror” (the first three paragraphs) is some of the best writing you’re ever going to see.

I suppose you could say Lovecraft overdoes it with the adjectives here (the easy usual charge against him), but it seems to me that he gets away with it, which is why rules shouldn’t always be robotically applied to anything– it’s always possible to get away with breaking a rule if you do it just the right way.

As readers of this blog know, I think that each and every one of us is defined by what we can get away with that no one else can get away with. And here I’m not talking primarily about criminal acts or the marshes of amoral squalor (though some people get away with these too). I’m talking instead about more general character traits that allow us to push through along certain avenues, unhindered, while others are stopped there as if at a checkpoint for hours of questioning, often giving up because of the sheer annoyance. Knowing what you can get away with is an important part of self-knolwedge, and knowing what others can get away with that you can’t is a good away to avoid falling into resentment at their supposed special treatment. (You probably get it yourself, but in different areas.) This, I believe, is one of the central facts of ethics.

“When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean’s Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation. Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled, solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strown meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.

Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic’s upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises.

As the hills draw nearer, one heeds their wooded sides more than their stone-crowned tops. Those sides loom up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them. Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich”.

Among other things to like about this passage, both the first and last sentences of it are brilliant. I love “the wrong fork” in the first sentence and “sometimes” in the last sentence.

now reading

Lovecraft, “The Colour Out of Space.”

It was his favorite of his own stories, but I think it’s clearly not quite his best.

Which one is his best? I’d probably join many others in giving it to “At the Mountains of Madness,” except that it goes on about 60 pages too long. The opening 40 or 50 pages are brilliant.

I’ve always been fond of “The Dunwich Horror,” despite a couple of shrill moments near the end, because I think it’s very well written. Some people dismiss it as being too focused on Christian themes of good and evil rather than the pagan amoralism of the other stories, but I think that slightly overstates the case.

“The Shadow Over Innsmouth” is sometimes called the scariest. I can see the point. (And incidentally, Houellebecq is wrong that there are “zero” references in Lovecraft to the financial standing of his characters. In “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” the narrator chats with the train station employee about his need to be economical with his travel funds. But Houellebecq’s point basically stands.)

I’m not especially fond of “The Shadow Out of Time” (the last of the eight “great tales”).

As for the most underrated Lovecraft story, I think it’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” especially the Revolutionary War-Era parts. Sci fi/horror set in the 1700’s is a brilliant idea, and he pulls it off well.

the Leibniz comparison

A number of people lately have been comparing OOO to Leibniz, sometimes in a flattering manner, sometimes more in the spirit of: “You stupid retread! We’ve heard this all before.”

In fact, Leibniz is probably my favorite philosopher. However…

*I got to where I am through Heidegger, primarily. Leibniz was someone met at a roadside café well into the trip.

*God plays no special role in my metaphysics, unlike for Leibniz. If God exists, then God must follow the same rules of vicarious causation as every other entity, even if God is much stronger than they are.

*There is no distinction for me between substance and aggregate. All substances are ultimately composed of aggregates; I oppose every form of atomism.

*There is no pre-established harmony in my system.

*I do not believe all objects were created at the beginning of time. New ones are being created constantly.

In short, the differences between OOO and Leibniz are a lot more interesting than the similarities.

keeping track of time

A married couple I know was once having strange problems running out of money every month, even though their income was OK and their expenses apparently not that high at first glance. They went to a financial advisor, who said “keep track of everything you buy for one month, and then we’ll talk about the results.”

They followed this instruction, and it turned out they were losing lots of money because they were doing most of their shopping at convenience stores, where prices are heavily inflated compared with supermarkets and grocery stores. Problem solved.

If I did a similar exercise with time, I suspect it would reveal that the internet is eating up too much of my time. I may try to move to a system of only three email checks per day, something like that, rather than having it on most of the time during the day.

the virus

Only slight improvement.

It’s the same sort of thing I used to get in Cairo from shisha smoking, but I haven’t done that now in quite a long time. It probably already took 5 years off my life, unfortunately. I was a shisha café regular for many years, even though I loathe the flavor of cigarettes and have probably smoked a total of maybe half a dozen in my life, only because someone stuck them in my mouth at a party or something like that.

Cigarettes just taste horrible, and I don’t know you all can smoke them.

aw, shucks; & pets

Thanks Diarmuid. I do try to be sweet.

“My interview with the philosopher Graham Harman was published in Mute magazine. I’ve called him ‘a prolific, iconoclastic thinker of objects whose work proffers an alluring antidote to the linguistic turn and the recent anarcho-deleuzian contagion’ – I didn’t mention that he also loves cats, is militantly vegetarian and that he’s a very sweet guy… You can find it here.'”

Actually, Diarmuid and I had a great discussion on tape in London just minutes before I left for Oxford in early May, and that was the foundation of the interview that appeared in Mute.

I love dogs, too. Cairo just isn’t a very easy city in which to have one. Not much grass, not many parks to run around in, so it would be a housebound existence for dogs here with occasional walks on pavement, at least in Zamalek. If I moved back to El Rehab I could have a dog, but I can barely find cat babysitters when I travel, let alone babysitters for more complicated dog stayovers.

We always had dogs when I was growing up. First was Juniper, a mutt with a bit of airedale in her; my parents rescued her from a shelter near Chicago when I was about 2.

Then we had a sheepdog named Xantha, but couldn’t keep her for long. I don’t remember why not. Xantha was a purebred sheepdog, so just for fun my dad (who was a total hippie longhair at the time) registered her with the Kennel Club. You had to give a first and second choice for name in case the first choice was already taken, so my dad tried to ensure that Xantha was accepted by listing “Susie Puntwater Fishfin” as the second choice. They gave us “Xantha” in the end.

Juniper died in 1982. In 1983 my youngest brother demanded duck chicks for his 10th birthday. It seemed like a bad idea to me, but it worked out brilliantly. Ducks are extremely good pets, as long as you have enough space. At the time we were renting an old farmhouse (though not farming ourselves). There were mulberry bushes on the property, and the ducks loved the berries. They also eat a lot of mosquitoes. Finally, they’re more emotionally accessible than you might think, though the white one was more aggressive than the brown one, who had a bit more emotional subtlety. During the freezing Iowa winters we would put the ducks in our dirt-floor basement.

The duck period lasted several years. The white duck sadly died after some animal dug into their pen one night and fought him; probably a fox. The brown one simply vanished a couple of years later, and was possibly eliminated by a jerk neighbor we had who didn’t want “that damn duck” crossing into his stupid manicured yard.

We were never cat people, but in 1987 my youngest brother found some kittens abandoned inside one of the old farm sheds where we were living. Some of the cats died prematurely from various causes, while the survivors served as magnets for additional new cats that emerged from nowhere, and all told my parents were stuck in the cat business for nearly 20 years.

In 1994, my other brother used to play with a cute fox terrier puppy in his apartment complex. The puppy was called “Cobain,” and was badly neglected by the irresponsible undergraduates who owned him. One day my parents drove over to visit my brother, “Cobain” jumped in their car, and they insisted on keeping him. The undergrads agreed they could have him. Renamed “Woody,” he turned out to be a very smart and likable dog. Like most of his breed, he could even understand sentences. Once someone said: “Woody, go upstairs to your toybox and get the rope.” He cocked his head sideways while thinking, the command was repeated a few times, and finally he went upstairs to get the rope. Woody also loved fortune cookies, and would often bury them in the yard in their plastic wrappings for later retrieval.

In 2004 or so, a black dog was on the road near my parents’ house, and they took him. He was named Cairo, perhaps in my honor. (My grandfather was quite old by then and could never master the name Cairo; it was always “Romeo” or “Cicero” instead.)

Otherwise, my Toronto brother (not the youngest) had a few pet red-eared turtles when he was somewhat younger.

Ah yes, we also once saved a baby rabbit in our yard whose mother had been killed. We called him “Ears,” and released him into the wild one day once he had grown enough. That was an unusual experience. We let Ears out of his cage, and he didn’t run away immediately. He just sort of grazed on the grass, slowly moved his way while grazing into the weeds, and then simply never came back.

I think there may have been a fish tank at some very early point as well, but I have only feeble memories of it.

It’s not exactly Lingisian pet exoticism (I’ve never owned an electric eel, parrots, toucans, Himalayan pheasants, an octopus, bees, stonefish, or sharks as Al Lingis has at various times), but these were all great animals.

Lovecraft

Decided to read more Lovecraft rather than Shakespeare, the book being due. Not sure how people can claim that Lovecraft is not a good stylist. He’s actually very good. I’ll talk about that in the book.

volume comes from other people

For graduate students who find it hard to finish even one piece of work (I did too at that stage) here’s a statistic of the sort I’ve given before.

Currently, quite aside from pieces that are already finished but still forthcoming, I can see on my list of duties that I have already promised to write an additional 11 articles over the next 7 months, and give an additional 11 lectures over a slightly longer period than that.

All 22 of these commitments, without exception, were the result of invitations, of which I received literally none before about 2004, but now receive them on almost a weekly basis, this week included.

When people invite you to do things, as long as you have some energy and tend to say yes to things, you’ll go from having zero publications to having dozens within a few years, because (a) you don’t want to let people down, and (b) requests from others always carry with them certain constraints, in the sense that the requesters will usually give you the general topic and the expected length. Once someone gives you those parameters, “writer’s block” tends to vanish, because the specter of infinity is no longer haunting you. It’s now a finite project, and someone has helped you out by making the first couple of decisions for you.

I’m also contractually committed to two additional books already. But those were my idea, not someone else’s. From which it can be deduced (truly) that I prefer to write books. Books are medium-length adventures that help define epochs of life, and you generally come out the end transformed more than is the case with smaller assignments.

good day to stay indoors

I didn’t really go out, but a friend called and said it was 40 C / 104 F today in Cairo. Miserable, if true. Not that dry today, either.