Schuman Day [8.v.2020] / Victory in Europe - Liberation Day [9.v.2020]

8 May 2020
Schuman Day

Did you know that
Pink Floyd
does Friday Fundraisers?
#pinkfloydfridays
#stayhere #withme
#pulse #runrabbitrun

Good writers do backgrounds when they can.
Better planners do the background FIRST
and respect it and put it in due proportion.
That way the foreground and the middle of the field can pop out
or stay disguised/camouflaged depending on what you want to do.

Such was the German President's speech
and Queen Elizabeth the Second's
on the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe / Liberation Day.

Orientation, too, is important.

In the theatre set design can be very abstract and symbolic.
So, too, in music videos and their staging.

Such was the case in The Eddy
which was released on the 8th May in the Netflix world.
It was done by the director of LA LA LAND.

What a wonderful first episode.
I needed something to keep my hands and brain busy.

The drawings come in three by three.

I used five colours and/or shades.

The bottom is a sunset-type image and there is much showing through when it comes to yellow and pink and purple.

The top has a two-toned brown background and then there is red green yellow and blue.

And I wouldn't be me if I didn't do all the colours at some point.

The middle illustration reinforces the point about backgrounds.

There are people walking all over the pile of rocks and other people floating in fine-tip pen.

One of my more amusing philosophical moments this May
when I was reading the Oxford Companion to Philosophy [the 2005 edition which I acquired in 2012-13]
was about SLIME - not the Internet phenomenon precisely
- how SLIME is applied in philosophy.
It takes up this third space between what is concrete and what is abstract.
And it often connotes feelings of disgust and of fascination - this emotionally ambigious space which is a sense of productive uncertainty.
A sense - too - of sensoria and qualia.

I had some more serious moments too.
On the 29th April 2020 for instance when I spent time with Makers of Modern Culture
and I wanted to know more about the speech act as one of the UK's greatest philosophers has it.
This philosopher is J. L. Austin and he disseminated these ideas about the three forces
[well, these are the three forces which are the most famous].

Illuctionary which is defined as what is done IN saying something

[Anthony Flew: 1981]

Locutionary which is the act OF saying

and finally perlocutionary - what is EFFECTED IN OTHERS by the saying.

These are applications of performative utterances. 

Quickly summarising: we have in, of and by - "little words that pack a big punch" [I seem to remember an almost preternaturally verbally agile young man called Billy in Beautiful Child {T L Hayden 2002} who said that - and specifically about the word bad

Could easily have been his classmate Jesse - probably unlikely to have been Gwennie because she only came to the class sometimes - and the others Zane and Shane and Venus].

In philosophy - and especially in analytical philosophy - you have to look after the pennies. Even then you have not the guarantee that the pounds will look after themselves and grow interest.

I credit/blame Stephen Toulson and his definitive logical text The uses of argument [1959].

That same day was the 250th anniversary of Yorkshire merchant seaman and explorer
James Cook
and his coexplorer Joseph Banks
when they arrived on the east coast of the Australian continent.
You can read more about James Cook and Joseph Banks in The Conversation.

Also in the Conversation's CURIOUS KIDS section there was an 11-year-old who wanted to know

CAN THE WORK ON CORONAVIRUS STOP WAR?

Good question! And never too soon to learn about the roles of multilateral organisations!
For those of you who can read on the side ... and especially the green highlighted bit ...

The legacy, of course, was and continues to be deeply contested.

During the beginning of May I was pointed to a review of a movie called In Deed which was about a young boy called Benny and how he and his mother Melva meet Abe.

Abe is a churchman of the evangelical persuasion [that issue of the Monthly: Schwartz Media was kneedeep in evangelicalism and charismatics - Shane Danielsen was not immune!] and essentially he thinks/hopes/wishes his church can cure Benny. #mentalisation #filmmaking

A lot of my neurodivergent friends and interested and interesting people will probably have perceived and conceived where this is going.

Unfortunately [?] I did not get to that bit.

I did see scenes of Benny in his school - Abe is a cleaner there - and how he and Melva interact in church - and some attempts at exorcism and getting the demons/spirits out.

And how the rest of the family is - like the sister - and the woman who visits after an interaction in the waiting room.

Another interesting movie I watched - and had wanted to watch since January 2019 -

was Marwencol

which was an artistic and technical paracosm very relevant to this weekend - the macro and the micro ones.

Marwencol is this Belgian town which became a stopping place for veterans and travelling folk who are represented in the form of dolls - Barbies for the women and action figures for the men.

It grabs the viewer and never lets them go in the central dilemma between worlds.

Photography plays a role in disseminating Mark's universe of World War II figures that are based on people in his life that he imagines and reflects on and remembers.

People like Wendy and Colleen and Anna and various of his male friends from before and after the cataclysmic attack which results in brain injury and the associated effects.

There are moments when Mark walks on the streets of the real world with a well-modelled and sturdy tank.

There are so many swirly feelings and swishy feelings [the latter my invented set of concepts for dress; costume and genderplay / genderbending and exploration].

Thank you to the maven who recommended Kanopy.

One can watch 15 movies standardly - that is one movie every two days if you are sensible and/or use the credit-free work.

I noticed there was one on Valued Roles and Normalisation and another musical one.

Lots of sporting interests covered/explored too.

Was looking for a book about The death of the Fitzroy Football Club ...

That was one of those slimy moments of machination and Machievellian feeling - Holmesby represents it so well and so objectively.

One of the more wonderful sporting and human interest moments was when Adam Scott called up a fellow golfer and turned up to their club through the help of a significand ...

A very lovely Tete-a-tete. Probably not like the ones in Paris cafes between 1929 and 1979 between de Beauvoir and Sartre and their circle - which are so well covered by Hazel Rowley #goodthingscometothosewhowait #andtothosewhosurvive #thriving #flourishing #copology #continentalphilosophy #existentialism #riversideoaks

Hoagie's Gifted October 2019: If you[th] but knew/Michaelmas Term Reflections

In July 1995, on a doctor's visit, I read an alphabet which said I for if only in reference to learning differences like reading and writing disorder [known as dyslexia and dysgraphia] - 'If only' are the saddest words in the English language.

It was in a women's magazine/general interest magazine - probably something like Better Homes and Gardens.

Now we are in October 2019 and Hoagie's Gifted have done a blog hop known as If you only knew. I only got into Hoagie's Gifted again after a long break in May 2019 when I was really starting to explore Mix.

Thank you Pamela and Caroline for what you do.

It was super good to read Gail, Teresa and Linda in Living with Geniuses; Help My Children Thrive and Gifted Challenges.

Pamela and Caroline? Aren't those names familiar?

And alphabetisation and literacy? Aren't those going to be important in some way?

There is a wonderful book called If youth but knew which I picked up one day some time between 2009 and 2014 and finally had myself read in 2014. It seems to be a romance of multigenerations and I hope it introduced healthy communication among the generations and within generations.

I am thinking too of Yom Kippur, and the terrible thing which happened in Halle, Germany. Two people were killed because of anti-Semitism [and this article shows us how Germany is trying to deal with it]. The suspect did confess; according to Deutsche Welle.

And I know who won the Nobel Literature Prize in 2019! I read Olga Tokarczuk this year [had to check twice to get it right - I had only just read her Flights over Christmas and again a few months later] and I do not know if I have read Peter Handke. He seems like a film person.

Narrative power and linguistic integrity - these are big things, and things that I have "pleased to strive" over my whole literary life.

This Monday Michaelmas Term began - it is supposed to begin around the end of September of any year and it is after St Michael and all the Angels.

For me Yom Kippur is all about repentance and confession - something that I understand both in the religious and the mental health worlds.

I explored repentance a lot in Rivals of the Collegiate through the actions and words of a sensitive young woman who is Gifted and has many Gifted friends. She is moderately gifted [or only just over bright] - her friend is profoundly gifted.

They do this over the spring term [March-June].

The students - like Holly McCutcheon - explore repentance too.

During Michaelmas Term there are a lot of set pieces and people get to know one another, or know one another again. There is always - always - hope!

This is the first thing I want to concentrate on in this If youth but knew post.

A lot of people do not feel hope in the first place; or have it taken away or stolen from them for some reason.

Or they invest a lot of hope in things which may or may not happen.

It is all a matter of probabilities and of trust.

The thing I wanted to repent hardest during this Yom Kippur season was intellectual arrogance.

Over this season I had said some hard and harsh things to Astrid and some flippant things to Emma in the This is the very definition of rain.

Relaxing or slacking with our fellows means so much. Especially if we have to maintain high standards in public life and we hold ourselves to high expectations. We can forget that not everybody does this; nor desires to do this; nor has to do this.

We think misleadingly that society is so much more cruel than we could ever be individually and we forget to #choosekind.

Or we believe that humility is a form of oppression and we tend to believe our own publicity.

And we forget that we too are vulnerable. Or we are too/overly conscious of our vulnerability in the face of audiences real and imaginary.

At the Ray Chen performance I had the opportunity to meet a lot of gifted youth and youth with all sorts of gifts.

I remember too how I studied intellectual virtue.

In the Funk and Wagnalls 1997 year book [events of 1996] which did not come to me until the early 2010s as the result of the death of a grandparent there is a reference to Bennett's The book of virtues.

Midgley and Murdoch [Iris] did a lot to teach me about virtue too.

And there was Stephanie Tolan and a great website about intellectual virtues, which I was able to explore through a case study of Justin Chapman.

The story of Chapman is a very tragic one at least as I perceived it in early December 2001.

There were strong implications of fraud and imposture.

Eighteen years later I hope Justin is being good and doing good for his own values of good and finding harmony and decency and dignity.

The way gifted people live is not always very pretty - especially scrabbling along with the 99%.

One thing that really helps me is that three times as many people measure as intellectually disabled as do within the range of the gifted.

This keeps me more focused on grit than on glamour.

Grit is a very good thing and a very undervalued thing - especially if one is intolerant; impatient and used to quick results.

The consequences grind more slowly in relationship than in behaviourism or some other ideology.

My own intellectual virtues are curiosity and openness - those are the two I achieve consistently.

The others are spottier.

One of the others is intellectual courage. I consider it to be one which is not so spotty.

I thought courage to be a big virtue - and I was able to read a wonderful article on a trip about physical courage and moral courage. This was some time in October 1995.

In my own life I find they are intertwined. I can show moral courage by physical courage and vice versa.

That whole keeping on keeping on - intellectual persistence.

Here is some of the work of Leia Zhu who lives in the United Kingdom. She is a violinist and I discovered her through Ray Chen and his performances of Waltzing Matilda and Paganini. Zhu has some wonderful things to say about her craft which developed over her European trip with a friend.

I had first thought of contributing to Hoagie's Gifted seriously in September 2019 when the topic was Anxiety and Perfectionism and using Natalie Portman's BLACK SWAN - Darren Aronofsky is a legendary director who gets a lot into and out of his women. The things Ms Portman's character puts into Swan Lake being Giselle. I had also read Meredith Danman's biography of Margot Fonteyn.

Australian Ballet is really good too. McAllister is leaving.

Love Zhu's spiritual and wise words here. And the glowing purple.

There is Wiesnaski also.

Two years ago of course there was the mainstreaming of #metoo / #balancetonporc [Bring your pig/abuser to account]. In 1996 Tamika had a young lady at camp who testified against her abuser and Tamika felt she wasn't doing enough.

I think too we can often feel like we are not doing enough.

Or we have done too much too wrong at the wrong time.

I keep a Kim Wilde song for times like this. It is called You'll never be so wrong.

When YouTube and Quora and Twitter are not behaving themselves it can make my work and play very difficult!

Two lovers in a city cafe - what a great beginning.

In late 1999-early 2000 I wrote a scene which was set in Portsmouth, Hampshire. I reflected last Tuesday that these are some of the scenes I am proud of as a writer - yes, among the overall text. And to think that five years before at the earliest I had barely started my writing life.

School stories were only supposed to be a side hustle and amusement. I am sorry, but it is true. This was a fairly recent reflection.

Some final notes on courage from We bought a zoo:

B Mee says "You need twenty seconds of courage" to his son Dylan.

I believe - every twenty seconds there is a moment or ounce of courage. And if you find that at least once you are doing pretty well.

Chloe Gillmere and Elena are looking for new wheelchairs and new controls. I remembered a Bangalore gentleman who wrote to me this May.

"The joy of professional exchange is a curiously unsung hymn"...

"For great practitioners of the art, whose lives are at the mercy of a vocation" ...

"Such people are wedded to the endless rigor of the search and perhaps the most ultimate union an artist can ever forge will be with someone who shares not his bed, but his dreams". [Daneman 2004].

Margot Fonteyn would be 100 years old if she were still alive.

And the Rugby World Cup is going well. Still in the second half 10-3 Australia - Georgia.

Abiy Ahmad won the Nobel Peace Prize! Yes!

So I wanted to say something about my literary godfathers - Jeffrey Archer; Ian Serralier and Miroslav Sasek. And there was this Latvian guy who wrote Little Bibie the Turtle.

"Without people; nothing is possible - without institutions nothing is enduring": Jean Monnet

When I was reading the Pacific Standard's Medium.com interview with Ralph Nader - the US consumer advocate - near the end there was this Jean Monnet quote which it is good to remember.

I made two graphics.

"Without people nothing is possible" - Jean Monnet
1888 is when he was born
1952 is when the European Coal and Steel Commission started his work.

"Without institutions nothing is enduring"
Jean Monnet
The "without" is bordered with a hexagon
The "institutions" and "enduring" are written in upper-case
"Nothing" and "is" have two separate borders in the same colour