I was inspired by my earlier post to think about aesthetics – the philosophy of art, beauty, etc. And I did a brief perusal of the related article on the topic on Infogalactic and discovered something: In ancient and medieval world, specific things were called out as being beautiful: order, form, harmony, unity, etc. This was… Read More On Aesthetics
That may be unfair. Caroline Calloway isn’t the first person who couldn’t make a book deadline. But the disconnect between reality and InstaReality is as vast: Caroline Calloway knew she was not who she had made the world believe she was. She had created a public image that was essentially false and, when she was… Read More A “One-Woman Fyre Festival”
All aesthetic positions are going to offend someone, because concepts of the beautiful are perpetually wrapped up in concepts of the true, and that makes sense in poets’ vomitings but not as an ontological baseline. Whether the beautiful and the true are connected in some way doesn’t really help us to define the beautiful. The… Read More Originality is not Art.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s term for a society based on humility towards what can be known. It is the sort of utopian idea that causes one to reconsider one’s own mental processes rather than draw up a blueprint for how others ought to behave. He has also inspired me to read some Montaigne. Odd that I… Read More Epistemocracy
Short, as epics go. And one certainly feels something got lost in translation. But there’s a marvelous universality to it at the same time, and a quaint reflection of a world more enchanted and more innocent. And the way it ends bespeaks a kind of tragedy-of-time, a luminous lamentation, that reminds me of Beowulf. I… Read More Gilgamesh is Fascinating.
adjective 1. kind, especially to inferiors; gracious: a benignant sovereign. 2. exerting a good influence; beneficial: the benignant authority of the new president. 3. Pathology. benign. Definition: Dictionary.com Where I found it: The Orphic Hymn to Ares To lovely Venus [Kypris], and to Bacchus [Lyaios] yield, to Ceres [Deo] give the weapons of the field; Encourage peace, to gentle works inclin’d, and give abundance, with benignant mind.
The Sunrise Motel makes note of the same Film School Rejects article that I did, and pulls a good description of the puritanical urge to sieve any piece of art for wrongthink, “hermeneutics of suspicion”. I might go a step farther than this, and say that a great deal of criticism is done not for… Read More Hermeneutics of Suspicion and the Problem with Film Critics
From Dictionary.com: Dornick – a small stone that is easy to throw away. Polemology – the study of human conflict and war. Busticate – to break into pieces. Krummholz – a forest of trees on the timber line of a mountain. Demonym – a term for a people who live a particular place. Peculate –… Read More A Collection of Fun Words
Good post by Christian Mihai. The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely. – Lorraine Hansberry Most people loathe solitude. Silence. The empty room. Nothing but their minds for company… But, to paraphrase John Steinbeck, all great and precious things are built in… Read More The War for Art is Fought Within You
So Party at the Last Tomorrow has had its moment. I got some good feedback on it, and I’m pleased that it picked up as much interest as it did. A Kindle Countdown deal suggested to me that I’m pricing these novellas too high. I’ve already dropped the price on The Devil Left Him to $3.99, I may… Read More An Update, Brief and Modest
Content Blues 