“I had recourse to the expedient of letting myself go completely in order to live in the world of my choice.” Spring and All, William Carlos Williams.

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“Already it has moved us, toward and away from each other, farther than we expected: the everyday glamour of a ‘personal life,,’ keeping a diary and so forth, is the outward sign of this progression that is built into us like the chain of breathing.” (John Ashbery, New Spirit.)

These are some mostly off-the-wall ideas occasioned by Kevin Drum’s article in Mother Jones last October, here. He has a more recent post on this topic here.

— Technology arises out of spiritual failure –our failure to concentrate– and must grow more complicated as our distractedness increases. (It also increases our distractedness.)

— “To be dominated by artificial intelligence is the same as to be dominated by thoughts of the future.” (Artificial intelligence is an embodied incapacity to live without forethought. Prometheus not only unbound, but boundless.)

— Question. If “being in the moment” is in some sense the spiritual goal (or anyway, a desirable state) which is a greater impediment to its attainment: dissipation or technology?

— True or false: “If we were all good Christians and Muslims and Buddhists there would be a steady decline in the use of technology.” (If we were all good scientists…?) (If we were all bad Muslims and Buddhists and Christians?)

— Robots are the Ideal It’s said that we can’t arrest technology’s advance because we’re “all human” (we can’t help wanting the convenience and advantage technology provides so we couldn’t go backward in that respect if we tried). But perhaps it’s actually because we’re all, in our essence, robots that we’re really so drawn to technology? That robots are for us, not a necessity, but an ideal?

(To say it otherwise, human beings are the first robots, the first artificial intelligences, and are now in the process, as it were, of spinning these attributes off.)

— The arts. Even if a computer could create Sly Stone (or his music) would it ever have an incentive to do so? One can certainly imagine a computer having both the capacity and incentive to create a Jar-Jar Binks. But (as it seems to me) there is no demand for Sly Stone until he has happened — one wouldn’t know to make him.

(This is to say: maybe artificial technology will have the same constraints as commercial radio, being without the incentive to create anything very lasting or unique. Supposing it could make a Sly Stone, would it have the incentive to make his music widely available?)

–Although I suppose artists to be as replaceable as anyone else by A.I., if not more so, I wonder if there would be a shift noticeable between pre-and post AI music that might be found, in the long run, to be undesirable; and that this too could extend toward other occupations.

Artificial intelligence, artificial knowledge? In reflecting on the possibility of a computer which is, from our point of view, all intelligent, all knowledgeable, it might be constructive to reconsider the limits of knowledge and intelligence. What do these do and not do for existence? Perhaps in some sense humanity’s lack of intelligence that is responsible for its evolutionary success? Perhaps un-intelligence makes existence seem worthwhile?

–How will A.I control human understanding of human history? Will the story of human history become — how it came to develop A.I?

Videogame idea: combining several video games “worlds” into one protean everchanging game. Mario Brother plus Missile Command plus Asteroid. SuperMario climbs up one of the missile attacks, as if it were rope, begins tumbling in space, fits into the Asteroids space ship then comes out, knocks his head against the asteroids, gradually turns into a ball, then we’re in Pong, then the Pong ball is a missile attack with a Mario face trying to hit one of the cities… trying to “win” at a game which never remains the same. Now we’re in Frogger but which way do we go when approaching us from the other side of the highway is this terrible centipede whom the cars cause to change direction? (How do we win at Centipede when we’re Frogger? How do we win at Galaga when we’re Mario?)

“In this White House […] Truthful and transparent is great, but we don’t even have a coherent strategy to obfuscate.” [Post]

For some reason impressed with this brief Tennessee Williams description (from Night of the Iguana):

She held out her hand and drew her slender fingers into a chalice that closed.

What is the precise hand gesture that’s been described? I view it as the archetypal Macbeth “is this a dagger I see before me” type hand gesture, the archetypal Italian Capice? type hand gesture… [Or near relative.] Maybe what is interesting is that it calls attention to the suggestive powers of the hand: that it can be a hand at one moment and then represent something (a chalice) the next.

To make one’s fingers into a chalice then to close up the chalice…. This is to show the power of representation [that fingers can make us think of a hard substantial specific thing like a chalice] in one moment, then in the next return to being unrepresentative, to being mere fingers, no longer pretending, having a physical not metaphorical power — chalices cannot, like fingers, close.

Disons-le d’emblée (*) défis: Les principaux défis de notre temps sont la montée des inégalités et le réchauffement climatique.

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Red (alone):

White (alone): “love’s modest snow white weed” [196];

Red and White: “To praise that clear unmatched red and white which triumphed in that sky of his delight” [11-12]; “But beauty, in that white entituled from Venus’ doves, doth challenge that fair field. Then virtue claims from beauty beauty’s red, which virtue gave the golden age to gild their silver cheeks, and called it then their shield, teaching them thus to use it in the fight, when shame assailed, the red should fence the white” [57-63]; “beauty’s red and virtue’s white” [65];

Red things with white things: lilies and roses [71-77]; lily hand, rosy cheeks [386];

Green and white: “on the green coverlet, whose perfect white show’d like an April daisy on the grass” [394];

White and blue: “her breasts like ivory globes circles with blue, a pair of maiden worlds unconquered” [407];

Silver: “silver melting dew” [24]; “silver cheeks” [61]; “silver moon” [371];

Silver white: “when beauty boasted blushes, in despite Virtue would stain that o’er with silver white” [56]

Gold: “golden splendor of the sun” [25]; virtue has given golden age beauty’s red, [60]; Hair like golden threads, [400];

Pale: “and to Collatium bears the lightless fire, which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire” [5-6]; “pale with fear” [183];

Black: “blackest sin is cleared with absolution” [354];

Color: [92]; “why hunt I then for color or excuses?” [267];

Ce chant, différent de celui des autres, semblable à tous les siens, où Vinteuil l’avait-il appris, entendu? Chaque artiste semble ainsi comme le citoyen d’une patrie inconnue, oubliée de lui-même, différente de celle d’où viendra, appareillant pour la terre, un autre grand artiste. Tout au plus, de cette patrie Vinteuil, dans ses dernières œuvres, semblait s’être rapproché. [Wikisource: Proust,La Prisonnière, chapter 2, pp 68.)

Scott-Moncrieff’s translation:

This song, different from those of other singers, similar to all his own, where had Vinteuil learned, where had he heard it? Each artist seems thus to be the native of an unknown country, which he himself has forgotten, different from that which will emerge, making for the earth, another great artist. When all is said, Vinteuil, in his latest works, seemed to have drawn nearer to that unknown country.

A century ago, 5 million elephants roamed the plains and forests of Africa. Now fewer than 400,000 remain, devastated by poaching and the destruction of their natural habitats, the AP reported. Rhinos have had a similar fate. Fewer than 30,000 remain in the wild. Post, 2/5/18.

Ionian Islands:

In Ancient Greek the adjective Ionios (Ἰόνιος) was used as an epithet for the sea between Epirus and Italy in which the Ionian Islands are found because Io swam across it. Latin transliteration, as well as Modern Greek pronunciation, may suggest that the Ionian Sea and Islands are somehow related to Ionia, an Anatolian region; in fact the Ionian Sea and Ionian Islands are spelled in Greek with an omicron (Ιόνια), whereas Ionia has an omega (Ιωνία). In Modern Greek this is purely a spelling distinction, but the different pronunciations in Ancient Greek would have eliminated the risk of confusion between the two areas. Furthermore, [they are accented differently and] the proper adjective for Ionia is Ionic, not Ionian.

Quelque soin que l’on prenne de couvrir ses passions par des apparences de piété et d’honneur, elles paraissent toujours au travers de ces voiles.

*

Whatever care we may take to cover our passions through the appearance of piety and honor, they may always be seen beyond these veils.

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“Shakespeare himself may have found it disturbing. He set out, it seems, to write a straightforward comedy, borrowed from Giovanni Fiorentino’s novella “Il Pecorone” (“The Big Sheep”), only to find himself increasingly drawn into the soul of the despised other. Shylock came perilously close to wrecking the comic structure of the play, a structure that Shakespeare only barely rescued by making the moneylender disappear for good at the end of the fourth act.”…. Stephen Greenblatt, New Yorker

“All along he had seen what was happening to him; and yet held by convention he had refused to act always, because somehow he was not hard enough to act. He was not strong enough, that was the real truth — had not been.”(Theodore Drieser, Free.)

fence on the Boston C … Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage. [x]

related to the foregoing, to what extent are Elizabeth W. and Reefy’s other dark haired girl versions of the same? Elizabeth Willard has two expressions of her restlessness (a love of the stage, sexual activity) somewhat like the dark haired heiress has two main choices for suitors (representative of wealth/ sexual activity)

Trying to sort out the order of events in the two stories “Paper Pills” and “Death” from Winesburg.

Dr. Reefy is forty five when he begins his courtship with the dark haired girl.

He is described at that time as having a jaded grey horse.

At the beginning of “Paper Pills”, we are told that now Dr. Reefy is an old man with a white beard, but that long before he drove a jaded white horse from house to house, then later he married the girl with the dark hair and money.

I had thought that Reefy’s grey horse had turned white but it must be his white horse that has turned grey or else two different horses, both jaded.

In “Death”, Dr. Reefy’s beard is described as grey, but he doesn’t have it yet; he has a brown mustache at this point.

(Perhaps this is just random but, in the two stories involving him, there is an odd transposition at play, in that Dr. Reefy’s beard and horse are both described as having been both white and grey.)

Reefy is described, during his relationship with Elizabeth as being in “middle age”, which must be some years before he turned 45, when his relationship with the girl with dark hair occurred. (His relationship with Elizabeth preceded that with the girl with the dark hair.)

Elizabeth is described as being a “a tired, gaunt old woman at 41” when she has the decisive moment with Dr. Reefy, when Dr. Reefy observes the youthful force within her, a few months after which she dies.

Elizabeth died when George Willard was 18, and began seeing Dr. Reefy when George Willard was “12 or 14,” so she must have herself been in her mid to late thirties. (The implication is that she was 23 when she gave birth to Geoege Willard.)

“Paper Pills” takes us from the present day, when Reefy is 55, back ten years to when he married the heiress at 45. We don’t know anything about the period of Reefy’s life between his affair with Elizabeth and his marriage to the heiress.

Curiosity: do we have enough information to determine the age of George Willard at the time “Paper Pills” begins? Say Reefy was 30-35 during his relationship with Elizabeth, then George Williard (18 at the time of her death) would be 38 at the time Dr. Reefy has a large white beard at 55. That is close to the age Anderson would have been when writing these stories (Born 1876, Winesburg written over 1915-16.)