Art – Page 42 – Robert Bettmann

Finished a good full draft of All Good Men; ready for the cast

I’ve been sitting up, watching Independence Day in the background (on A+E), and working on the script for All Good Men. As earlier posts reveal, I’m adapting a script for use as a dance theater project. I’m terribly behind in my schedule, but don’t doubt it’ll get done. I’ve done this before… I had a company from 2001-2003, and made full evening length shows in a little over three months. Twice! I think these twenty minutes of dance won’t be too burdensome to complete by July.

The script, the frame, for the dance, is this story written by Dylan Thomas. I just finished placing in the dances, agreeing on almost all of the music. Here is the final scene – the Doctor speaking to his students for the last time:

To think is dangerous. The majority of men have found it easier to droop into the slack ranks of the ruled. I beg you all to devote your lives to danger; I pledge you to adventure; I command you to experiment. [slowly]

I have attempted to teach you the dignity of man: to think. But to think…. is to enter into a perilous country, colder of welcome than the polar wastes, darker than a Scottish Sunday, where the hand of the un-thinker is always raised against you, where the wild animals, who go by such names as Envy, Hypocrisy, and Tradition, are notoriously carnivorous, and where the parasites rule.

Pay no attention to the mob. Remember that the louder a man shouts the emptier is his argument. Remember that the practice of Anatomy is absolutely vital to the progress of medicine. Remember that the progress of medicine is vital to the progress of mankind. And mankind is worth fighting for: killing and lying and dying for. Forget what you like. Forget all that I have ever told you. But remember that.

Independence Day is now at my favorite part — the speech that the ‘president’ gives before leading the troops into the final air battle. Bill Pullman as the President in Independence Day Oddly enough – he says: ‘we will not go quietly into the night!’. Which is theft of a Dylan Thomas line: “Do not go gentle into that good night”. I realized a while ago that the theme played by Bill Murray on the piano in Groundhog Day is actually a variation by Rachmaninov. Apropos of nothing…

I wonder which part of this project I’ll perform. As President Bill Pullman just said: “I’m a combat pilot, bill. I belong in the air.” I know one of the smaller parts is best for me… I’m thinking I’d like to play either the student or the Doctor’s assistant. Next few days will include re-recruiting the dancers and setting the rehearsal schedule.

In Praise of … Guernica

Detail from Goshka Macuga’s tapestry version of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, on loan to London’s Whitechapel gallery. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Below is an editorial published in The Guardian (UK) on Thursday March 26, 2009. The subtitle of the piece is ‘Flailing bulls and horses show that the visceral horrors of war are not just an affront to human civilisation, but to life.’ This is the piece in entirety:

In occupied Paris, a Gestapo officer who had barged his way into Picasso’s apartment pointed at a photo of the mural, Guernica, asking: “Did you do that?” “No,” Picasso replied, “you did”, his wit fizzing with the anger that animates the piece. Work started weeks after German bombers had unleashed an early dose of Blitzkreig on the Basque town from which the work takes its name. It was first shown at the world fair in Paris, supposedly a showcase for scientific progress, but the deaths of hundreds of civilians in a small Spanish town proved technology’s darker side. As in Picasso’s cubist days, there are symbols and broken shapes aplenty, but with Guernica there is no need to decipher. The message is stark, with immediate impact. In black and white, the piece has the urgency of a newspaper photo. Flailing bulls and horses show that the visceral horrors of war are not just an affront to human civilisation, but to life. With the help of Stepney trade unionists, keen to raise awareness of Spain’s civil war, in 1939 Guernica came to Whitechapel art gallery. Next week the gallery reopens after an overhaul, and a full-size tapestry copy will form part of an installation by artist Goshka Macuga. It is borrowed from the UN, where it normally hangs outside the security council chamber. When Colin Powell was setting out the American case for war against Iraq in 2003, it was decided it would be “appropriate” to cover it up, a tale that offers a powerful rejoinder to Wildean quips about all art being perfectly useless.

The Agreement of Ideas

Louis Armstrong [ From the proprietor, 4/16/09:

In the original post, I began by quoting Louis Armstrong as saying: “What you don’t know ain’t gonna come out the other end of your horn.” That’s Louis on the side here. That wisdom, however, was in fact played by Charlie Parker. I’m pretty certain I knew that, somewhere in me.

The night I wrote the post I was working on my own book, and was feeling kinship lovey with Terry Teachout, whose Louis Armstrong biography will be out shortly. His blog, which is regularly good fun, as I’m sure the book will be, just had a great post about his process of tracking down the authenticity of things that Armstrong said. You can see that here. And now back to the previously scheduled broadcast…]

I’ve been working on my book the last few weeks. I’ve written in prior posts about the upcoming publication of my Masters thesis. I am working with a large academic publishing house, and am not provided with a text editor. I am responsible for delivering a finished file, which they will put together and print.

I was working last night on Chapter 3, which deals with the science and philosophy that influence our perception of the body. I’ve always enjoyed studying history. The lives of the people who had these ideas, did these things. I find it interesting. I was looking at the section on the English philosopher Locke last night. Here’s the intro:

John Locke (1632-1704) was born at Wrington in England, and educated at Oxford where he received his B.A. and M.A. Subsequently he became a lecturer in Greek and later Reader in Rhetoric and Censor of Moral Philosophy, still at Oxford. In 1666 he met Lord Ashley, later First Earl of Shaftesbury, a leading figure at the court of Charles II. A year later he joined the Earls household, and for the next fourteen years shared in the fortunes and misfortunes of Ashley, serving in a number of supportive bureaucratic positions as the Earl rose to become Chancellor.

Locke was interested in philosophy, and it was the writings of Descartes in particular which first interested him. As Locke put it: he wanted to understand very precisely and systematically what knowledge “was capable of.” Nevertheless Locke was too involved with the vagaries of British politics to write early in his life. In 1683 he was even forced to slip away into exile in Holland following the Rye House Plot to kidnap the King. Locke was able to return to Britain in 1689 following the crowning of William of Orange, and it was at this time that the majority of his works were finally printed.

The Essay Concerning Human Understanding, (1690) his magnum opus on epistemology, was inspired by a conversation with a group of friends in 1671. They were engaged in philosophical discourse, when it became clear that they could make no further progress until they had examined the minds capacities and had seen “what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with.”

Lockes basic notion counters Descartes, in that he believes that experience is the basis for all knowledge. We receive “ideas” from sense experience, and Knowledge, with a capital “K”, is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas. There are four means of establishing knowledge: Identity, Relation, Co-existence or Necessary Connection and Real Existence. All knowledge is also either actual (directly in front of us) or habitual (having seen proof and remembering it.)

What I was struck by just now is Locke’s assertion that Knowledge is the perception of agreement or disagreement between two ideas. I think there’s an interesting application there to choreography. I’m really looking forward to getting into the studio in April to start choreographing again. Just cause I know whatever I know….. doesn’t mean it WILL come out the end of my horn. But it’s been a few years, and I’m pretty psyched to see what we come up with.