Happy Birthday, Manet

Manet, White Lilacs in a Crystal Vase, 1882

There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.

Édouard Manet, born on this day in 1832

Happy Birthday, Hutchence

Michael Hutchence was born on this day in 1960.

"Love Is (What I Say)" ...

Back.

Parkinson, C.S. Lewis, 1951

C.S. Lewis, "De Descriptione Temporum," Inaugural Lecture from The Chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, 1954

First, for the reassurance. I do not think you need fear that the study of a dead period, however prolonged and however sympathetic, need prove an indulgence in nostalgia or an enslavement to the past. In the individual fife, as the psychologists have taught us, it is not the remembered but the forgotten past that enslaves us. I think the same is true of society. To study the past does indeed liberate us from the present, from the idols of our own market-place. But I think it liberates us from the past too. I think no class of men are less enslaved to the past than historians. The unhistorical are usually, without knowing it, enslaved to a fairly recent past. Dante read Virgil. Certain other medieval authors evolved the legend of Virgil as a great magician. It was the more recent past, the whole quality of mind evolved during a few preceding centuries, which impelled them to do so. Dante was freer; he also knew more of the past. And you will be no freer by coming to misinterpret Old Western Culture as quickly and deeply as those medievals misinterpreted Classical Antiquity; or even as the Romantics misinterpreted the Middle Ages. Such misinterpretation has already begun. To arrest its growth while arrest is still possible is surely a proper task for a university.

And now for the claim: which sounds arrogant but, I hope, is not really so. I have said that the vast change which separates you from Old Western has been gradual and is not even now complete. Wide as the chasm is, those who are native to different sides of it can still meet; are meeting in this room. This is quite normal at times of great change. The correspondence of Henry More and Descartes is an amusing example; one would think the two men were writing in different centuries. And here comes the rub. I myself belong far more to that Old Western order than to yours. I am going to claim that this, which in one way is a disqualification for my task, is yet in another a qualification. The disqualification is obvious. You don't want to be lectured on Neanderthal Man by a Neanderthaler, still less on dinosaurs by a dinosaur. And yet, is that the whole story? If a live dinosaur dragged its slow length into the laboratory, would we not all look back as we fled? What a chance to know at last how it really moved and looked and smelled and what noises it made! And if the Neanderthaler could talk, then, though his lecturing technique might leave much to be desired, should we not almost certainly learn from him some things about him which the best modem anthropologist could never have told us? He would tell us without knowing he was telling. One thing I know: I would give a great deal to hear any ancient Athenian, even a stupid one, talking about Greek tragedy. He would know in his bones so much that we seek in vain. At any moment some chance phrase might, unknown to him, show us where modem scholarship had been on the wrong track for years. Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you somewhat as that Athenian might stand. I read as a native texts that you must read as foreigners. You see why I said that the claim was not really arrogant; who can be proud of speaking fluently his mother tongue or knowing his way about his father's house? It is my settled conviction that in order to read Old Western literature aright you must suspend most of the responses and unlearn most of the habits you have acquired in reading modem literature. And because this is the judgement of a native, I claim that, even if the defence of my conviction is weak, the fact of my conviction is a historical datum to which you should give full weight. That way, where I fail as a critic, I may yet be useful as a specimen. I would even dare to go further.  Speaking not only for myself but for all other Old Western men whom you may meet, I would say, use your specimens while you can. There are not going to be many more dinosaurs.

Possible.

Richards, Alexander Pope, 1737

Wonderful it is, that so few of the moderns have been stimulated to attempt some Dunciad! Since in the opinion of the multitude, it might cost less pain and oil, than an imitation of the greater Epic. But possible it is also that on due reflection, the maker might find it easier to paint a Charlemagne, a Brute or a God­fry, with just pomp and dignity heroic, than a Mar­gites, a Codrus, a Fleckno, or a Tibbald.

We shall next declare the occasion and the cause which moved our Poet to this particular work. He lived in those days, when (after providence had per­mitted the Invention of Printing as a scourge for the Sins of the learned) Paper also became so cheap, and printers so numerous, that a deluge of authors cover’d the land: Whereby not only the peace of the honest unwriting subject was daily molested, but unmerciful demands were made of his applause, yea of his money, by such as would neither earn the one, or deserve the other.

Alexander Pope, from The Dunciad: With notes variorum, and the prolegomena of Scriblerus. Written in the year, 1727

Happy Birthday, Byron

Johnson and Wilson, Sixth Baron Byron, Line Engraving after a Painting by Thomas Phillips, 1873, n/d

STANZAS for MUSIC

There be none of Beauty's daughters

With a magic like thee;

And like music on the waters

Is thy sweet voice to me:

When, as if its sound were causing

The charmed ocean's pausing,

The waves lie still and gleaming,

And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:

And the midnight moon is weaving

Her bright chain o'er the deep;

Whose breast is gently heaving,

As an infant's asleep:

So the spirit bows before thee,

To listen and adore thee;

With a full but soft emotion,

Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

Lord Byron, born on this day in 1788

Full.

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it. 

John Burroughs, from "Winter Sunshine"

Thanks to Walker's Arms for the view.  What a great site.

Released.

Sting's best solo album, The Soul Cages, was released on this day in 1991.

"The Wild Wild Sea"...

I saw it again this evening

Black sail in a pale yellow sky

And just as before in a moment

It was gone where the grey gulls fly.

If it happens again I shall worry

That only a strange ship could fly

And my sanity scans the horizon

In the light of the darkening sky.

That night as I walked in my slumber

I waded into the sea strand

And I swam with the moon and her lover

Until I lost sight of the land

I swam till the night became morning

Black sail in a reddening sky

Found myself on the deck of a rolling ship

So far where no grey gulls fly

All around me was silence

As if mocking my frail human hopes

And a question mark hung in the canvas

For the wind that had died in the ropes

I may have slept for an hour

I may have slept for a day

For I woke in a bed of white linen

And the sky was the colour of clay.

At first just a rustle of canvas

And the gentlest breath on my face

But a galloping line of white horses

Said that soon we were in for a race

The gentle sigh turned to a howling

And the grey sky she angered to black

And my anxious eyes searched the horizon

With the gathering sea at my back

Did I see the shade of a sailor

On the bridge through the wheelhouse pane

Held fast to the wheel of the rocking ship

As I squinted my eyes in the rain

For the ship had turned into the wind

Against the storm to brace

And underneath the sailor's hat

I saw my father's face

If a prayer today is spoken

Please offer it for me

When the bridge to heaven is broken

And you're lost on the wild wild sea

Same.

Life and ink, they run out at the same time

Or so said my old friend, the squid

Jimmy Buffett

Mike Scott and Steve Wickham, "Mad as the Mist and Snow"

Bolt and bar the shutter for the foul winds blow

Our minds are at their best this night and I seem to know

That everything outside us is mad as the mist and snow ...

Jimmy Buffett, "Turn Up The Heat And Chill The Rosé"

Unfold.

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

William Blake, from "Jerusalem"

Seer.

I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences. This is an unspeakable torture during which he needs all his faith and superhuman strength, and during which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed—and the great learned one!—among men.—For he arrives at the unknown! Because he has cultivated his own soul—which was rich to begin with – more than any other man! He reaches the unknown; and even if, crazed, he ends up by losing the understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them! Let him die charging through those unutterable, unnameable things: other horrible workers will come; they will begin from the horizons where he has succumbed!

Arthur Rimbaud

On.

At the end of each grading period , I ask my students to complete a grade card on my performance as their teacher.  This came from a sixth-grader ...

Thank you, Avery.

Everywhere.

I sit up late dumb as a cow,

which is to say

somewhat conscious with thirst

and hunger, an eye for the new moon

and the morning’s long walk

to the water tank. Everywhere

around me the birds are waiting

for the light. In this world of dreams

don’t let the clock cut up

your life in pieces.

Jim Harrison

William Byrd, "La Volta"

Joseph Gramley, percussion, and Clive Driskill-Smith, organ, perform ...

Know.

Phillips and Taylor, Walt Whitman, 1873

MIRACLES

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in the bed at night with anyone I love,

Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,

The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships with the men in them,

What stranger miracles are there?

Walt Whitman

Useful.

C.S. Lewis' letter to a young girl offering advice on writing ...

When you give up a bit of work don’t (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.

I would add that it's essential to keep a journal and take it with you everywhere.

Everywhere.

Lost.

From Jack London's "To Build a Fire" ...

He was angry and cursed his luck aloud. He had hoped to get into camp with the boys at six o’clock, and this would delay him an hour.  Now he would have to build a fire and dry his moccasins and socks.  This was most important at that low temperature. He knew that much.  

So he turned aside to the bank, which he climbed. On top, under several small pine trees, he found some firewood which had been carried there by the high water of last year. There were some sticks, but also larger branches, and some dry grasses. He threw several large branches on top of the snow. This served for a foundation and prevented the young flame from dying in the wet snow. He made a flame by touching a match to a small piece of tree bark that he took from his pocket.  This burned even better than paper. Placing it on the foundation, he fed the young flame with pieces of dry grass and with the smallest dry sticks.

He worked slowly and carefully, realizing his danger. Gradually, as the flame grew stronger, he increased the size of the sticks with which he fed it. He sat in the snow, pulling the sticks from the bushes under the trees and feeding them directly to the flame. He knew he must not fail. When it is 75 below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt to build a fire. This is especially true if his feet are wet. If his feet are dry, and he fails, he can run along the trail for half a mile to keep his blood moving. But the blood in wet and freezing feet cannot be kept moving by running when it is 75 degrees below. No matter how fast he runs, the wet feet will freeze even harder. 

All this the man knew. The old man on Sulphur Creek had told him about it, and now he was grateful for the advice. Already all feeling had gone from his feet. To build the fire he had been forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly become numb. His pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pushing the blood to all parts of his body. But the instant he stopped, the action of the heart slowed down. He now received the full force of the cold. The blood of his body drew back from it. The blood was alive, like the dog. Like the dog, it wanted to hide and seek cover, away from the fearful cold. As long as he walked four miles an hour, the blood rose to the surface. But now it sank down into the lowest depths of his body. His feet and hands were the first to feel its absence. His wet feet froze first. His bare fingers were numb, although they had not yet begun to freeze. Nose and face were already freezing, while the skin of all his body became cold as it lost its blood.

Orson Welles narrates the 1969 adaptation ...

The Moody Blues, "Melancholy Man"

Thanks, Kurt.

DEVIL COME ... OUT!

Pub.

At the pub pic.twitter.com/oA7GrEn3MD

— Conor Lynch (@c_k_lynch) January 14, 2025

Excellent.

An excellent album …

RUSH, "Jacob's Ladder"

Thunderheads are rumbling

In a distant overture ...

Trust.

The Athletic on Dan Campbell's leadership ...

Campbell asked his team who they wanted to be.

“You have to be made a certain way or you’re not even coming here anyway,” he said recently. “The fact that you’re doubted — ‘You’re not good enough, you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re not very smart, you can’t process, you’re throwing the ball out of bounds on fourth down, your coach is a meathead …'

“You go through this whole deal, but yet you look at each other and you trust each other.”

He trusted them. They trusted him. Three wins later, including a winner-take-all finale against the Vikings, Campbell slipped on a baby blue T-shirt that read “READY TO ROLL” in the victorious locker room at Ford Field. The Lions had repeated as division champs and clinched the NFC’s top seed for the first time in franchise history. Their story was still in their hands.

Sacred.

Sykes,  The 11th Duke of Devonshire Naps in the Lower Library of Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, 1995

Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.

George MacDonald

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Microgramma.

Attentiveness.

Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.

Mary Oliver

Happy Birthday, Webster

If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work on brass, time will efface it. If we rear temples, they will crumble to dust. But if we work on men’s immortal minds, if we impress on them high principles, the just fear of God, and love for their fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.

Daniel Webster, born on this day in 1782, from his speech to the Boston City Council, May 22, 1852

Always.

Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.

C.S. Lewis, from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Away.

By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day." But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late.

There was a broad track, almost as broad as a road, leading from the Outland to the Forest, but before it could come to the Forest, it had to cross this river. So, where it crossed, there was a wooden bridge, almost as broad as a road, with wooden rails on each side of it. Christopher Robin could just get his chin to the top rail, if he wanted to, but it was more fun to stand on the bottom rail, so that he could lean right over, and watch the river slipping slowly away beneath him. Pooh could get his chin on to the bottom rail if he wanted to, but it was more fun to lie down and get his head under it, and watch the river slipping slowly away beneath him. And this was the only way in which Piglet and Roo could watch the river at all, because they were too small to reach the bottom rail. So they would lie down and watch it ... and it slipped away very slowly, being in no hurry to get there.

A.A. Milne, from The House at Pooh Corner

Engines.

One of the engines of the world and change is that disobedience and irreverence and standing up and saying, “I don’t believe in this.”

Francis Mallmann

Van Morrison, "Too Long in Exile"

And the wheeling and the dealing

All takes up too much time

Check your better self baby

You'd better satisfy, satisfy your mind ...

Always.

Those who do not move do not notice their chains.  Freedom means always the freedom for one to think differently.

Rosa Luxemburg

Always.

A.W. Hosmer, Walden Pond, Looking southwest from Thoreau's Cabin, 1908

My profession is to always be on the alert to find God in nature.  I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows.  Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Henry David Thoreau

Decision.

Thanks, Kurt.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Guarini

Guarini, Cappella della Sacra Sindone, 1694

Guarino Guarini was born on this day in 1624.

Lions in the Piazza describes Guarini's dome in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud  ...

The chapel’s main entry-points take the Baroque passion for dramatic lighting to a whole new level. Guarini shifted the original floor plan to squeeze three circular vestibules around the outside. While one leads to the ducal palace, the others connect to the cathedral via stairways. By shrouding the stairs in darkness, Guarini forced pilgrims to act out their faith by ascending almost blindly. Emerging from the blackness, they would finally step amongst the golden stars circling the Shroud.

Stark black-and-white marble echoes the theme of light and dark, designed to evoke the suffering represented by the shroud. Instead of a hemisphere,Guarini presents a whole series of shapes piled on top of each other, culminating in what might be the world’s strangest dome. Amongst the many oddities of the chapel’s middle zone, Guarini created two kinds of surfaces: one with a complex network of stars and hexagons, and the other with crosses distorted to look like they are being stretched into a curve. The latter configuration was only possible with Guarini’s work in advanced geometry.

The “dome” is unlike any other structure in the world: six levels of hexagons, each composed of six arches, are stacked at alternating angles. By manipulating the proportions of each layer, Guarini created the illusion of a tunnel extending far beyond the building’s size. He enhanced the effect by using soft greys which mimic colors blurring in the distance, a trick he likely picked up from ancient Greek theories about perception.

Thank you, Dr. Wolner.

Jim Harrison, "Lessons from a Raven Funeral"

Someone looked down from Babel's tower

And got the wrong idea 

Ignoring the birds above him ...

Entirety.

Interest.

Interest, not happiness, is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.

Georgia O’Keeffe

Better.

Steve points to important things ...

The world can get better but people don’t feel it – they can even feel like they’re going backwards – because once a problem is solved it’s replaced by a new one, often with the same level of anxiety, fear, and anger.

A few things I keep in mind:

• In a way, the best definition of progress is when you’ve knocked out the major issues and are left dealing with lower, less-severe ones.
• Stress is an innovator. Nothing incentivizes like worry, so we should never want a world where people see everything as perfect.
• People are problem solvers. It’s a great characteristic and the source of all progress. But when solving problems is core to your identity, you occasionally see trouble where none exists.
• Being angry can be an intoxicating feeling. It offers a sense of moral superiority, because when you accuse others of causing problems, you’re implying that you are better than them. It feels great, and in a strange way some people love being pissed off.
• The dumber the disagreements, the better the world actually is.

Happy Birthday, King

I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. In struggling for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns.  Someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., born on this day in 1929

Whither leadership?

David Gilmour, "Time/Breathe (Reprise)"

He's better than ever ...

Living.

Juan Mari Arzak has no bad days ... 

It’s after noon, but he has just gotten out of bed. “I’m not very hungry yet. There was a lot of traveling yesterday,” says Arzak, who at 72, with his wispy white hair and his gentle demeanor, might seem like any grandfatherly figure on vacation and out of place among the hipsters who are here to blow it out like they’re starring in their own MTV videos. But this grandfather can teach the youngsters a thing or two about living it up.

“Maybe just a little jamón,” he says when you’re seated for coffee. Straightaway, the chef at the hotel’s Traymore restaurant, which specializes in seafood, sends out a glistening plate of the finest Pata Negra, which appears nowhere on the menu. Then Arzak gets a hankering for gambas, instructing the waiter to make sure the kitchen doesn’t overcook them. The kitchen does one better, sending out a heap of fat, plain langostinos, just like he likes them. Arzak, whose famed restaurant in posh, seaside San Sebastián has held on to its three Michelin-star rating for a remarkable 26 years, dips a couple of the tails in fresh mayonnaise and sucks out a couple of heads before he realizes something else is missing. 

“Let’s drink vino tinto,” he says, and out comes the red wine.

Inescapable.

We find that in the absence of demonstrable truth, the best we can do is to exercise the greatest diligence, humility, insight, intelligence, and industry in trying to arrive at the nearest values to truth. I hope, of course, to argue convincingly that having done this, we have an inescapable duty to seek to inculcate others with these values.

William F. Buckley Jr., God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Vast.

Travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy, and it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast countries still very imperfectly explored.

Bertrand Russell