8 December 2018
While You Were Sleeping (1995)
It is a perfect picture: Each dialogue is broken up into musical phrases each of which ends with a joke. Characters are worldly enough not to laugh at their own jokes. Screen time is apportioned according to merit. The plot is not propped up by characters' stupid decisions. Instead, everyone who gets a hand at controlling the plot acts responsibly. The movie does not solicit donations.
28 November 2018
Alexander McQueen (2018)
As any genius, McQueen was on the technological frontier, not just the conceptual one. He lived his vision and paid others with the honour of being a part of it. He also was others’ vision. He lived a supercritical life, condensed. He was fortunate to know and live by his obsession.
5 October 2018
La Bohème
(The Metropolitan Opera, 29 September 2018)
Some things change. Others don’t. Individuals crave both. Opera belongs to the latter kind.
Change is a tree, not a path. Having some recollection of the past helps one retrace one's steps back to a less wrong position, if necessary. A memory of the past shared by individuals in disparate presents furnishes a shared vocabulary that helps debate a more promising future.
Some things change. Others don’t. Individuals crave both. Opera belongs to the latter kind.
Change is a tree, not a path. Having some recollection of the past helps one retrace one's steps back to a less wrong position, if necessary. A memory of the past shared by individuals in disparate presents furnishes a shared vocabulary that helps debate a more promising future.
Hazmat Modine
(Terra Blues, 29 September 2018)
One should take care to live, not merely survive. It helps if one enjoys doing what one is doing---or at least enjoys the company of the fellow travellers---as one is trying to climb aboard. It is a jungle. The winners deserve their victory, but so do many losers. The net beneficiaries are the tourists, who are not required to fight on the turf whose fruits they consume. Everyone is a tourist tasting the fruits of the frustrations of past generations.
The band has perfected the blues and then has taken it two steps further. The timing is impeccable. The passion is genuine. The anger is genuine.
One should take care to live, not merely survive. It helps if one enjoys doing what one is doing---or at least enjoys the company of the fellow travellers---as one is trying to climb aboard. It is a jungle. The winners deserve their victory, but so do many losers. The net beneficiaries are the tourists, who are not required to fight on the turf whose fruits they consume. Everyone is a tourist tasting the fruits of the frustrations of past generations.
The band has perfected the blues and then has taken it two steps further. The timing is impeccable. The passion is genuine. The anger is genuine.
4 October 2018
"21st Century Choreographers I" by the New York City Ballet
(David H. Koch Theater, 28 September 2018)
In Vento (by Mauro Bigonzetti):
Individuals seek patterns, even in chaos, even if spurious. This quest is common to all (even digital) life, which seeks to encode and navigate the world. Discovered patterns knit the society together by helping its members coordinate with each other.
Art is the experience of being alone together with those who have long died, those who will live long after, and strangers, distant or near---all those who share the compulsion to create, if only vicariously. Art is a shared hallucination, a model of reality, the reality itself.
Judah (by Gianna Reisen):
Individuals find comfort in synchrony with others only to express autonomy by breaking free to syncopate, outperform, and improvise.
One way social science contributes is by isolating and naming phenomena. (Names don't explain, of course, just catalogue.) Art functions similarly but gives more expressive names.
The Runaway (by Kyle Abraham, with NYCB):
For some, a good life obtains if pleasure prevails over pain. For others, a good life is a good story. For some, a society worth imitating is healthy, sated, and entertained. For others, a society worth imitating is one that promises adventure.
In Vento (by Mauro Bigonzetti):
Individuals seek patterns, even in chaos, even if spurious. This quest is common to all (even digital) life, which seeks to encode and navigate the world. Discovered patterns knit the society together by helping its members coordinate with each other.
Art is the experience of being alone together with those who have long died, those who will live long after, and strangers, distant or near---all those who share the compulsion to create, if only vicariously. Art is a shared hallucination, a model of reality, the reality itself.
Individuals find comfort in synchrony with others only to express autonomy by breaking free to syncopate, outperform, and improvise.
One way social science contributes is by isolating and naming phenomena. (Names don't explain, of course, just catalogue.) Art functions similarly but gives more expressive names.
The Runaway (by Kyle Abraham, with NYCB):
For some, a good life obtains if pleasure prevails over pain. For others, a good life is a good story. For some, a society worth imitating is healthy, sated, and entertained. For others, a society worth imitating is one that promises adventure.
20 September 2018
"Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment" by Francis Fukuyama (2018)
There is a succinct essay somewhere in there, fighting to escape.
Each individual is endowed with a vector of characteristics. Markets convert this vector into a scalar—wealth—and rank everyone according to this scalar. Marxists defend the interests of, and aim to redistribute resources toward, those with low values of the scalar. Marxism is a priory “anonymous” (in the sense that it uses a rather coarse aggregate of individual characteristics) and, therefore, relatively inclusive. There is a limit to Marxism’s drive to redistribute, for a capitalist sufficiently impoverished becomes a proletarian and, so, a Marxist’s constituent. There is no such safety valve built into identity politics.
Identity politics emerged when Marxism ran out of steam as the working class began to prosper and identify with the middle class. So, the fight for the equality of the scalar has been replaced by the fight for the equality of dignity derived from identity.
An identity politician refuses to aggregate individual characteristics. He denies the existence of any objective way to do so. Any aggregator would presume that at least some vectors have a higher worth than others. An identity politician fails to compare not just individuals but also societies. This failure hampers the competition of ideas and ideologies. An identity politician circumvents competition and chooses to act directly on the school syllabi. The lack of competition, besides the obvious misguided focus on identities to begin with, is liable to neglect those identities advocating which would deliver the highest social return.
Identity politics focuses on the recognition of priors, not on cultivating belief-updating rules. Identity politics exalts immutable characteristics, not ideas that can be moulded, improved upon, and shared extensively; it is reactionary. The incomparability of identities hinders social mobility and, so, dampens competition.
Nationalism was adequate when it united parochial interests. Today, we can do better than that by promoting an ever-expanding identity, not a collection of narrow ones. This new identity ought to be rooted in ideas, not biological characteristics.
While Fukuyama correctly identifies the decease, his solutions are dubitable, twentieth century–ish.
Fukuyama claims that, in modern liberal democracies, citizens give too little to their country. He forgets about the taxes that support the welfare states. Fukuyama imagines a universal civil service as a bonding, nation-building experience. Why not a military one? Don’t the joys of the Greek army compensate for the humiliation of the 40 percent youth unemployment? A universal participation in markets—and in labour markets in particular—would be a better bonding experience than the army or civil service, for it would reflect the ideology that makes modern societies succeed.
Fukuyama opposes multilingual education at schools, as if America needed less diversity of perspectives, not more. If taking classes in French or Chinese radicalises, don’t mathematics and computer science, the gateway drugs into the supranational? Do not rally around the English language alone, which is by no means unique to successful liberal democracies; today, every half-educated punk is fluent in English. Instead, rally around a great product: a Tesla, a Big Mac, an iPhone, the philosophy of the exchange-instigated betterment and of liberty and equality for all. Should Canada, Argentina, or South Africa come up with a better product, we should all move there, instead of sticking to a failing ideology or language. Fukuyama decries the tyranny of contemporary identity politics and political correctness, and yet he maintains that patriotic brainwashing—not critical thinking—would somehow turn out to be more noble. The international fame of Taylor Swift and Elon Musk are likely to do more for American self-esteem than any number of recitations of the American anthem.
The problem with identity politics is the same as with protectionism. Maybe, one could cleverly fine-tune tariffs and make a country a little better off. It is more likely, however, that one would get the tariffs badly wrong, to the detriment of all, start a trade war, and witness the entire tariff-setting apparatus succumb to special interests. Don’t try it at home.
Each individual is endowed with a vector of characteristics. Markets convert this vector into a scalar—wealth—and rank everyone according to this scalar. Marxists defend the interests of, and aim to redistribute resources toward, those with low values of the scalar. Marxism is a priory “anonymous” (in the sense that it uses a rather coarse aggregate of individual characteristics) and, therefore, relatively inclusive. There is a limit to Marxism’s drive to redistribute, for a capitalist sufficiently impoverished becomes a proletarian and, so, a Marxist’s constituent. There is no such safety valve built into identity politics.
Identity politics emerged when Marxism ran out of steam as the working class began to prosper and identify with the middle class. So, the fight for the equality of the scalar has been replaced by the fight for the equality of dignity derived from identity.
An identity politician refuses to aggregate individual characteristics. He denies the existence of any objective way to do so. Any aggregator would presume that at least some vectors have a higher worth than others. An identity politician fails to compare not just individuals but also societies. This failure hampers the competition of ideas and ideologies. An identity politician circumvents competition and chooses to act directly on the school syllabi. The lack of competition, besides the obvious misguided focus on identities to begin with, is liable to neglect those identities advocating which would deliver the highest social return.
Identity politics focuses on the recognition of priors, not on cultivating belief-updating rules. Identity politics exalts immutable characteristics, not ideas that can be moulded, improved upon, and shared extensively; it is reactionary. The incomparability of identities hinders social mobility and, so, dampens competition.
Nationalism was adequate when it united parochial interests. Today, we can do better than that by promoting an ever-expanding identity, not a collection of narrow ones. This new identity ought to be rooted in ideas, not biological characteristics.
While Fukuyama correctly identifies the decease, his solutions are dubitable, twentieth century–ish.
Fukuyama claims that, in modern liberal democracies, citizens give too little to their country. He forgets about the taxes that support the welfare states. Fukuyama imagines a universal civil service as a bonding, nation-building experience. Why not a military one? Don’t the joys of the Greek army compensate for the humiliation of the 40 percent youth unemployment? A universal participation in markets—and in labour markets in particular—would be a better bonding experience than the army or civil service, for it would reflect the ideology that makes modern societies succeed.
Fukuyama opposes multilingual education at schools, as if America needed less diversity of perspectives, not more. If taking classes in French or Chinese radicalises, don’t mathematics and computer science, the gateway drugs into the supranational? Do not rally around the English language alone, which is by no means unique to successful liberal democracies; today, every half-educated punk is fluent in English. Instead, rally around a great product: a Tesla, a Big Mac, an iPhone, the philosophy of the exchange-instigated betterment and of liberty and equality for all. Should Canada, Argentina, or South Africa come up with a better product, we should all move there, instead of sticking to a failing ideology or language. Fukuyama decries the tyranny of contemporary identity politics and political correctness, and yet he maintains that patriotic brainwashing—not critical thinking—would somehow turn out to be more noble. The international fame of Taylor Swift and Elon Musk are likely to do more for American self-esteem than any number of recitations of the American anthem.
The problem with identity politics is the same as with protectionism. Maybe, one could cleverly fine-tune tariffs and make a country a little better off. It is more likely, however, that one would get the tariffs badly wrong, to the detriment of all, start a trade war, and witness the entire tariff-setting apparatus succumb to special interests. Don’t try it at home.
11 August 2018
Cuba Vibra! Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba
(Auditorio Nacional, 9 August 2018)
One gets the sense of the New World in the U.S., London, and Buenos Aires. (Buenos Aires is not so new as parallel.) In the DNA of each of these places is to dare to reimagine.
The Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba company encapsulates yet another world: the world of dance that has not ossified into gymnastics (the dancers actually hear, and contribute to, the music); the world of dance that could have been Broadway, Matthew Bourne, or classical, but has chosen to be something subtly different; the world of music that is as rich, or richer, than jazz, with its complex and multiple rhythms, upbeat and dreamy at the same time; the world of music that is home to the racing, dancing thought, or two, or three; the world of colours that just match; the world of dresses that bloom; the world whose all elements cohere into a poem.
Lizt Alfonso builds and then inhabits a world whose truths are beautiful.
One gets the sense of the New World in the U.S., London, and Buenos Aires. (Buenos Aires is not so new as parallel.) In the DNA of each of these places is to dare to reimagine.
The Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba company encapsulates yet another world: the world of dance that has not ossified into gymnastics (the dancers actually hear, and contribute to, the music); the world of dance that could have been Broadway, Matthew Bourne, or classical, but has chosen to be something subtly different; the world of music that is as rich, or richer, than jazz, with its complex and multiple rhythms, upbeat and dreamy at the same time; the world of music that is home to the racing, dancing thought, or two, or three; the world of colours that just match; the world of dresses that bloom; the world whose all elements cohere into a poem.
Lizt Alfonso builds and then inhabits a world whose truths are beautiful.
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