An ode to these keys

which make the dissemination of whatever this is possible.
shining bald homekeys, k d l s a ; j f. My fingers live here.
And the space bar
can't forget that long gray loaf.
The bread box?

I lived through something beautifully embarrassing. As I was practicing my cello for the first time in too many moons, a fellow German-house-resident stopped by. He said, can I play. I said, yes you may. He played. I laughed. He said, you play. I said, okay. I played. He smiled. I grimaced--it was awful! I was sight-reading the prelude to Bach's 3rd suite, a nice collection, but the prelude is probably the most pedantic of the thing.
Lame. And it sounded horrible. But then he left and five seconds later I was playing this beautiful song and it sounded fantastic. But oh well. It's enough that I have all of my teeth. Count my blessings, ja?
Lame story. Why do I widen the circle of those who know my embarrassment? Am I somehow comforted that strange people (yes, you) are no doubt bolstered my my blunders?

I was audience to Michael Fried's lecture at the MOA this evening. (Holy Moley.) I encountered Olitski's Hidden Combination and the eccentric trapezoids of Frank Stella. Fried was wonderful in his passion, lucidity, and overwhelming humanness. The bulwark of the lecture was an analysis of 22 art pieces (depicted on slides with a wonderfully yellow veneer--modern and minimalist artwork trapped in the amber sheen of aged material). This framework was draped in the anecdotes of Fried's tapestried history--since age 16 he's associated with the likes of Stella, Anthony Caro, and Tony Smith. The analysis was softened and blushed and billowing with his personal stories. Fly-on-the-wall stories offering more than simple reason and argument could. awwweessome.

The inner stirrings, are they heavier than reason? Plato's Symposium is a medium as good as any in which to examine this question. It is the fighting-ring of poetry and philosophy. In 5th century Greece (the Symposium probably occurs around 416-5 BC... a time in which Agathon won the tragic playwriting contest and Alcibades invaded Sparta, was called back because of some grandiose impiety, and was exiled), philosophy was considered the highest form of expression. Poetry (the pathos in tragic plays, especially) was it's most qualified competitor. Where philosophy exercised and strengthened the mind, poetry moved the heart (as painfully blase as that sounds...).
Present-day thought is another thing entirely. Leo Strauss (whom I admire for the most-part, except for his neo-conservatist international intervention beliefs) would say it is determined by essentially 2 powers: positivism (scientific knowledge is the only genuine knowledge. However, this eliminates value judgments as they are outside of the scope of science (ie. the distinction between "use" and "mis-use" of science--the atomic bomb, for example. Thought is objective, action subjective) and historicism (admits that both thought and action are subjective). Social science in Plato's time lived in an open horizon. Nothing was considered definitive. The answer to every question was ultimately: man has only an imperfect knowledge. This is necessarily implied by the etymology of the word philosophy quest for wisdom or love for wisdom. It is a built-in safety--an inherent confession of ignorance... an acknowledgment that though the human search is earnest it is only ever that--it is the never-ending journey (III: escape from fantasia. never-ending points to whomever has seen that movie and survived). Philosophy is ultimately the knowledge of ignorance. Plato? "Human knowledge is at best progressive and never final." A direct quote, I am sure. (I hope you all know, no explicit utterance of Plato's exists as such--indeed, while copies of his dialogues are intact, he claims nothing written in them as words from his own mouth. Much like Shakespeare. Though the ideas expressed in Shakespeare's plays are naturally his own, there is no character "Shakespeare" that offers us his personal words. It's important to remember not to ascribe all or even most sentences to Plato when reading any of the Dialogues.) Where was I? Long tangent. Oh yes. Poetry versus philosophy. Bla bla. I suddenly don't feel like talking about this anymore.

So, as a parting thought, I encourage all of you to use the term "dufi" as often as possible.

All of the sudden, I wanted to keep talking about dear old Plato. But I am tired! Holy cow!



Poetry and philosophy, as well as holy cow, all rolled into one glorious picture. You know you want it.