Therefrom, therefore ...

They say there was a time when artists were simply artisans. Nobody cared very much about an artist's name, background, upbringing, personality, appetites, political views, chest measurement, hat size. What did all of that matter, so long as the artworks were good? We don't ask after the personal minutiae of other hirelings, do we? That was back then. (And already by classical times artists had become names.) Nowadays we're at the other extreme. What does it matter if an artwork is good? (And what does 'good' mean anyway? Hah!) All that matters is a name, famous or infamous. An artist may exhibit a bag of garbage so long as he has a name. (However, that bag of garbage may be thrown out by the night cleaner—a truly newsworthy story.) Well, 'good' means what it has always commonsensically meant. And it is time that we put again some distance between the artist and his artwork, though not too much.

All too often we say that bad artworks are good, because we take the artists themselves to be good, not qua artists, but in some other way. Then we say that good artworks are bad, because we take the artists to be bad, not qua artists, but in some other way. Tsk, tsk. We may be ashamed of an artwork's parenting, of its birthplace, its provenance, of the rundown carriage that carried it to us—no matter. The artwork is its own standalone thing. How it came cannot change what it is (ex post facto). And if we can't see the what for the how, for the wherefrom, then so much the worse for us. Yes, if you're looking at a painting in a gallery, and a fellow gallerygoer tells you of the painter's turpitude, that he was vicious qua man (though virtuous qua painter), then what you see will probably change, though that at which you look is unchanged. And that's OK. We're not superobjective thingamabobs, after all. But don't let's visit the sins of the father on his children. Don't let's go searching for what isn't there, lest we find it, as hypochondriacs find diseases, diseases that aren't there but may as well be. (Wagner's 'Gesamtkunstwerks,' for example, have been constantly maltreated in this way.)

Note: The 'genetic fallacy' is the go-to fallacy these days. It's a real workhorse. For example, biological taxonomy is now phylogenetical, rather than morphological, and so genetic fallacies run roughshod over it. (Some Animalia are classed as Plantae, etc.) Moreover, Darwinists are forever telling us that we're really no greater than other animals. Why? Because we all have common ancestries and we all came by way of natural selection on random genetic mutation! But what we have here is another textbook genetic fallacy. Suppose the evolutionary anthropologist's just-so story is true, the story about humankind's wherefrom and whereby. Do we then become something other than what we here and now are (viz., rational animals)? Is phylogenesis morphology? Is efficiency formality? No, no, no.

Tippy ...

Tippy (who won't be leashed for walkies nohow)

Xantippe is sick. Yesternight she couldn't stop sneezing. And whereas most days she runs upstairs to say 'Good morning' with chirrups and purrs, when she hears I'm no longer abed, today she just sat dispiritedly at the bottom of the staircase. She's inappetent too, passing by her saucerful of milk, turning away from her cat treats. Poor Tippy. She's never been sick before.

UPDATE (Aug. 15): Yesterday Tip-tip was still immobile and inappetent. I was worried about dehydration and made her drink from a dropper. She seemed glad of it too — so why wouldn't she drink by herself? Then today I found an ugly bump on her underbelly. Was it a parasite? Off we went to Hillcrest Animal Hospital. Tippy had no fever, they said, and the bump was simply an abscessed wound. They cleaned it up, prescribed antibiotics, and said, '$200 please.' Now we're home and she's sleeping. Let's hope that's all it was. We'll see.

UPDATE (Aug. 16): That's all it was. (Leastwise she's eating and drinking normally now.)

Apprenticeship ...

Schönberg

Schönberg was a grandmaster. He was also my first real music teacher, though he died some thirty-four years before I was born. I read and reread all of his books and booklets, even such as were out of print and therefore costly, or which had to be ordered directly from UCLA, where he taught in later years. (I studied and wrote serial works, too, just to make his ghost happy.) And I read very trustingly, attentively, receptively, lovingly. It wasn't such a bad thing to do. He was a very good teacher. Nowadays I strongly disagree with his philosophy of music, nowadays I talk back. But I listened well for years beforehand. And if you're going to criticise something, you might at least know what it is.


(Side-note: We stress 'critical thinking' overmuch today, teaching students to talk back before they've really listened. Result: they criticise chimeras. Damnant quod non intelligunt. Look at the army of undergraduates fighting for 'rights,' human, animal, and even vegetable. Now try to find one among them who knows what a right is. If they'd had any sort of colloquy with tradition then they'd know that most 'human-rights violations' that come before the tribunals violate no human right, and that a brute animal cannot in principle be a rightholder. But they don't want first to listen to tradition. That comes late or never. No, the first thing is to strike! [At what? The chimera.] Well, well. To these weathercocks we may say: Welcome to a conversation that's been going on for thousands of years. Glad you could come. Sit and listen for a time. If you feel the need to speak, listen harder. Then, if you still have something to say, do so, but let the elders go first, the longtime listeners, as did Elihu, and prepare to be corrected, as was Elihu.)

Lately I've been returning to Schönberg's essays. What memories are here! They make me long for another trusting student-teacher relation. Some ask why I don't go back to school for a graduate degree. But college was for me just a long and expensive review that I didn't need (and that I'm still paying for). I'm in no hurry to go back. What I would really like is to find an old master with whom to study, maybe as a live-in. A sort of apprentice-manservant, yes, that's what I'd be. We'd live somewhere out of the way in Europe. Probably I'd have to learn German, elsewise to remember my boyhood French, s'il vous plaît. I'd make his tea, bicycle to the shops for him, feed the cat, do whatever needs doing. And he'd teach me advanced composing ἀρετή: how to deal justly with each note, how temperately to keep away from 'too-ness,' and so on. Most afternoons would find us at the café, going over our present scorework. Then there'd be long walks and longer talks. Cigars. Claret. Sometimes we'd go to church, analysing chorales in the hymnal, 'fixing' them if need be. (This I do already. It's not really vandalism is it? Anyway, I use a pencil. And I leave the book better than it was before.) Sigh. It's a daydream anyhow.