Take two

Talking with Lukas and he said, surprisingly, "my problem with Rothko is that he just does the same thing again and again. Where's the creativity of the artist there?"

Similarly, Roxana talks about the 'freedom of the artist' in the rather all-too familiar way of: repression by, or constraints imposed by: the State, Church, Religion etc., etc. One wonders, if that is true, whether many (most?) of the artists before the Renaissance were just duds, lacking in freedom, individuality, and creativity. Art for art's sake? Maybe. But shouldn't we also ask, like Brando, "have you ever considered any other freedom?" What happens when 'the shock of the new' is actually just a worn-out cliche?

Inventio:

re-discovering, re-turning..."take two-ness", re-vision, re-vising, re-living, creative repetition.. to draw out of a theme all the possible permutations. Look, and look again. Second-order vision.

'A culture based upon the printed book, which has prevailed from the Renaissance until lately, has bequeathed to us-along with immeasurable riches-snobberies which ought to be cast aside. We ought to take a fresh look at tradition, considered not as the inert acceptance of a fossilized corpus of themes and conventions but as an organic habit of recreating what has been received and is handed on. It may be that we ought to re-examine the concept of originality.

there may be other and better ways of being original than our concern for the writer's own individuality..our self-conscious fictions

We may come to believe that, great as some authors have been , their greatness is finally surpassed by that of the craft they have served; hence whenever we reckon their contributions we should also remember their obligations; no credit need be lost if some of it is shared anonymously with others trained in the same techniques and imparting the same mythology.'

---From Albert Lord's Singer of Tales

I can't imagine this as striking our modern ears as anything short of blasphemous..."our" hard-won freedoms and individuality achieved by defying the dead, oppressive weight of tradition and authority . To walk and think alone. 'I'...then the world. Creatio ex nihilo. The Romantic legacy. How can there be a 'commons of the mind' or 'group rationality'? What is this "muddy centre" before we were. I must see and make the world according to my own lights or be enslaved by those of another.

A desire to preserve indigenous traditions, to keep open the imagination's supply lines to the past, to receive from the stations of Anglo-Saxon confirmations of ancestry, to perceive in the rituals of show Saturdays, and race meetings, and seaside outings, ..in the necessities that crave expression after the church-going has passed away, to perceive in these a continual of communal ways, and a confirmation of an identity which is threatened-all this is signified by their language.
--Englands of the Mind, Seamus Heaney.

Edward Said on Glenn Gould:

The search for order and new modes of apprehension-a "new kind of thinking". To escape the need to grab attention [but escape where?]
A rejection of 'vertical' romantic music.

Bach: anachronistic (a return to old Church forms) and daringly modern in his isolation from rituals and conventions. Bach's innermost truth is that in him the social trend which had dominated the bourgeoisie (technology, rationalization?] is reconciled with the voice of humanity.

Gaddis: Not the opposition, but the overlap between artistic individualism and collectivist technology.

What's the problem? Technology.
What's the solution? Technology.

The ultimate mystery: the rational and the pleasurable.

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In the 'bringing forth' of the artisan the instrumental is detached -unlike a tree which brings forth fruit . The human way of "revealing".

Industrial techniques: not an unfolding but a "challenging" of nature (an unlocking, storming of it..see Hannah on acting "in" nature)

Modern technology turns everything into a "standing-reserve", a resource to be exploited. The loss of wonder, the truth of the thing. What is this but the demand for a constant presence. Is there, then, a link between the need for concepts, images in the human mind and technology?

Creativity: one must make something of one's own life. Is there an element of violence in this 'making'? Liquid modernity: nothing is 'given'. Are we not looking , ultimately, at two views of freedom?

~~~

Notes from Rieff.

Wilde as the prophet of the future..the artist as the revolutionary..free from inherited inhibitions conventions, conformities, authority. Express yourself! Subversiveness. Every man is his own priest (the Protestant contribution). And now: entertainment, stimulation, liberation..the "will" is everything. A learned rejection and acceptance, the compelling truths, is stifling, cramps my style. An artist creates his own life. No more imitation of models or ideal conceptions of the self..all that is solid...the "dissolution of restrictive shapings". To have and be everything.