Photo: Ossington Alley #1

Photo: Euclid Alley #2

Language and Meaning

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world"

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

I was reading the New York Times Sunday Magazine last weekend and caught this article, written by Michael Pollan, about the rise of agricultural diseases. In it, he begins with bemoaning the decreasing power of the word "sustainability", seeing as it has been turned impotent; yet another zombiefied corporate catch-phrase designed to make what one does appear useful even when in practise the reality is much more ambiguous.

There is a biting summary of this phenomena in the second paragraph of Pollan's article:

Confucius advised that if we hoped to repair what was wrong in the world, we had best start with the “rectification of the names.” The corruption of society begins with the failure to call things by their proper names, he maintained, and its renovation begins with the reattachment of words to real things and precise concepts. So what about this much-abused pair of names, sustainable and unsustainable?

I sat at the breakfast table, thinking about this paragraph. It stunned me, because my awareness of the philosophical questioning of language - its power to distort and clarify - didn't extend as far as back in time as Confucius. To read it made me understand that this conflict - the fight to keep language from becoming a meaningless putty in the hands of technocrats - has been going on probably since the dawn of communication. It wasn't until reading, of all people, Confucius - that old aphorism-spewing chestnut - speak about it that my understanding of the conflict was deepened.

The two writers who outlined this conflict most beautifully for me were Wittgenstein, quoted at the top (from his treatise, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and John Ralston Saul, who rallied against the rise of technocrats most effectively in his books Voltaire's Bastards, and The Unconscious Civilization. Each fulfilled a means of illuminating the power of language in a way that was neither impractically academic nor precious. Saul warns about how the images and words we share can be/have been actively distorted by those with corrupting self-interest. Wittgenstein's very philosophy is about the parsing of truth and falsity (or senselessness, as he would put it) in how we use language to construct a world view.

With the discovery of Confucius' addition to this subject, I now have more to research and reflect upon. I suppose I'm fascinated with this subject, and for reasons I don't think are trivial. We are beset by corrupted means of communication every day: images that lie as well as they seduce, thoughts withheld from publication/broadcast because of vested interests. And yet, most importantly, I believe it's also language that can save us - the very tools used to fool us can be used to liberate.

I suppose one of the first questions I have is whether there are more than a handful of people out there who give a shit, or whether this is a pursuit (non-Quixotic, I insist) only a begrudging elite will ever have interest in following. Sometimes I'm haunted by the words of writer William Sturgeon, who - when asked if it was true that he thought 90% of science fiction was crap - answered that, actually, 90% of everything is crap. What haunts me is how this somewhat off-the-cuff pronouncement translates into the percentage of everyday people who truly care enough about things like this. It's important to me that people understand that the corruption of language (visual, textual, audible) is not simply an academic concern, and that it's possible to put up an effective, civil defense against it.

Update: For more on Confucius and the "rectification of names", please see this link for some context.

Book Review: The Odyssey, by Homer

"As soon as Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more [...]"

Homer's Odyssey is one of the 500lb (or 226.796kg) gorillas I've been reading as of late. I came to it strangely. You see, eventually I want to read James Joyce's Ulysses (a gorilla estimated to weigh a half-tonne). I knew that it was going to be a slog, so I did some research in preparation. Lo, it was suggested I read The Odyssey, as Ulysses tends to make reference to it. And thus, the Fates, if not Athena herself, recommended my next book.

The Odyssey isn't a novel, but rather a song/poem much in the same way as the ancient epic, Gilgamesh (and if you don't know what that is - and no, it's not a reference to the evil magician from the Smurfs - don't worry about it. I'm just trying to find another example that isn't also another Greek work from the same period). It was never originally written down, but rather carried from person to person in the same way you would hand someone a CD of a song you'd like them to hear. Preserved through history as an oratorical epic, Homer's Odyssey is an account of Odysseus, the Achaean king/hero, and his Job-like 10 year quest to return to his homeland, Ithica, having fought a decade before in the Battle of Troy (recounted in Homer's earlier work, The Illiad).

What's immediately engaging about the telling of The Odyssey is its surprisingly non-linear construction. We don't start with the fall of Troy and Odysseus' return to Ithica. Rather, we begin with the immortal goddess, Athena, seeking to undo the curse laid upon Odysseus from the earthquake god, Poseidon. From there, she confronts Odysseus' son, Telemachus, living with his mother, Penelope, in Odysseus' Ithican palace, now taken over with young suitors angling to wed Odysseus' abandoned wife, laying waste to his kingdom in the process (note: the Greek gods tended not to come down and appear to mortals as themselves, but rather as fellow mortals - presumably shy folk that they are).

It is only after this substantial preamble that we - in filmic terms - cut to Odysseus, stranded on the isle of the immortal goddess, Calypso, where she has kept him for years as her...well...is "recalcitrant love-slave" applicable? Yes? Okay then. It is only through Athena's indirect intervention that Odysseus is allowed to leave and finish his journey. Along the way, he is eventually allowed to provide the details of his painful journey since the fall of Troy: the land of the Cyclops, the Sirens, the Lotus Eaters, the thunder of Zeus, the House of Death, the nature of Poseidon's curse. If you have any inkling or interest in swashbuckling adventure, heroic tragedy, monsters, mythology, or men transformed into sheep, there is no reason not to follow Odysseus' tale.

Even preserved in verse-form (read: there's half as much text on the page as in a typical novel), The Odyssey moves at a fast clip - though its thickness may intimidate you at first glance on the shelf. It's a legendary tale that's not like cough syrup to read - in fact, you may just find inspiration in its construction, evocativeness, and imagination.

The Odyssey, by Homer (ISBN: 978-0140268867) is available at a fine independent bookseller near you, or at any number of online sources. Please note: this review is based on the award-winning 1996 translation by Robert Fagles, who also produced a version of Homer's Illiad. For those on the fence, there is a very readable summary of the book and its history here.

Requiems Not Required: Jazz and Classical

Just today, I was sitting in the kitchen of a post production audio house - my current temporary office - and found myself inexplicably tuning in to what was playing on the radio: Schubert's Symphony No.5. It's a dreadfully beautiful piece of music. I say dreadfully, because it's so evocative as to remove my mind from the mountain of very important things I have to tend to.

Thing is, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in the building who could either name what was being played, or who would allow themself to be affected (nay swoon). But it's not like I set out one day in my youth, predetermined to "learn" classical music. I don't think anyone does, regardless of what it is we end up liking. Often we come across these things circumstantially. If it hadn't been for my watching A Death in Venice on TV one night long ago, I probably wouldn't have sought Schubert's symphony, nor the original story by Thomas Mann. I should also thank the old Warner Brothers cartoons, in particular the Bugs Bunny classic The Rabbit of Seville (riffing brilliantly and faithfully on Rossini's Barber of Seville).

Jazz came to me later, introduced by my flipping around the radio, looking for something other than Top-40 pap. And like everything I love, once I get hooked I find myself wanting to know more, filling in the holes illuminated by the light of my curiosity. I'm prone to infatuation and, not entirely unlike the tragic protagonist of Mann's Venice, find myself obsessed to learn as much as possible about these things.

The problem is that both Classical and Jazz, while not dead, are held in a stasis by so-called Classical and Jazz "lovers" who seek, paternalistically, to coddle them like glass-boned children, halting their growth (intentionally or not) and - as a dire result - their acceptance to new generations.

To some, this statement is nothing short of heresy. In Reflections of a Siamese Twin, John Ralston Saul - writing about the aggressive protectionism of French language in Quebec - made two valuable insights which also reflect on the state of Classical and Jazz music. First, that culture is not something which society should attempt to create, control, or destroy to meet our fashionable needs - it's a living organism which follows its own path. Second, that the only languages which need protection are dead languages. That is to say, he was criticising those who strove to legally protect and manipulate something which didn't require it in the first place.

The problem isn't that most of us don't tune-in to Classical or Jazz radio. The problem is that most everything programmed on these stations (with varying degrees, depending upon where you're located) is safe, old, and terribly predictable. Say what you will about the soulless depths of corporate-run, computer-programmed Top 40 radio, but one thing you can't deny is that they play songs written during this century (already nearly 8 years old). Jazz and Classical radio suffers from a predilection: only play the standards. Their philosophy: who cares if you play three different interpretations of Lullaby of Birdland seven times a day - it's a standard. Who cares if the daily playlist is the same tired variation of Mozart, Brahms, and Beethoven - they're popular.

They're partially correct: Lullaby of Birdland is a standard, and those three dead white German guys are popular. For both genres, deservedly so. But, in a contemporary sense, it's only to the extent of pleasing people who have no desire to see either Classical or Jazz develop in different directions. When was the last time you heard anything from Miles Davis' Bitches Brew on the radio? That album was released almost 40 years ago - when was the last time you heard a single Classical composition written within this time?

We can't rely on movie soundtracks and cartoons to bring notice to the brilliance of older forms of music - if we do, they will always remain "older forms of music" rather than the living, breathing spirits which they are. We do both Classical and Jazz a disservice by sneering at contemporary innovation - I contend that it's the snobs who have done the most damage. We can't rely solely on the likes of Wynton Marsalis as appointed sentinels to tell us what is or what is not jazz music. We can't forsake contemporary composers, like Alexina Louie, to keep programming the same tiresome Mozart/Brahms/Beethoven lineup for our orchestras.

People should be freely exposed to different forms of music. Often. However, it should be neither prescriptive nor mandated. Assuming we are only as developed as the environment we are exposed to, it makes critical sense to see, hear, and experience as many things as possible. It is for this reason that protectionism makes no sense.

[author's note: when using the terms "Classical" and "Jazz", I'm using popular terminology. Technically, within both (admittedly very broad) genres, there are countless sub-categories (Baroque, Be-Bop, Fusion, Romantic...).]

All those whose mind entitles themselves,

And whose main entitle is themselves,
Shall feel the wrath of my bombast!

- Mark E. Smith