t No, I won't object to Cheerskep's comment about the meanings of the word gravitas. I wonder why he is giving me a lesson about word meanings, again.
I'm the fellow here who has actually published an article about the impossibility of words (signs) having stable (fixed) meanings. The meanings we want to express with words are implied by the contexts we use for them. This was the sense of my article in Language Sciences, a peer reviewed linguistics journal. In that article I applied Roy Harris' Integrationist Linguistics to interpretations of abstract painting and the most commonly recognized theories of abstract art. In short, I am in full agreement with Cheerskep's view. My use of the word gravitas in my posted comment was not accompanied by lengthy contextualization simply because I don't think this is the place for drawn-out scholarly argumentation and because I relied on the common-sense use of the term, the contextualization already familiar to readers, more or less, in a circle of Euro-American contemporary culture. People recognize that there are presumed or learned spheres of contextualization for words. These contexts may differ from very narrow contexts to rather large ones. For instance teenagers are prone to inventing meanings for words that make sense only to a few of their peers while a larger regional culture may have special meanings for words otherwise unrecognized by still larger groups. But be that as it may, I certainly realize that the nuanced meanings of words, no matter what the contexts presumed or especially defined for them, are subjective and possibly unique to each person in each instance in which the word occurs. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, March 11, 2012 5:54:23 PM Subject: Re: Psychedelic art In a message dated 3/11/12 4:22:42 PM, [email protected] writes: > Some art is just pleasantly entertaining but I > always sense gravitas in the works of the great composers, writers, poets, > painter, etc., or at least in their major works. Maybe it's projection. > When you write that in certain works you "sense gravitas", I guarantee your words will occasion great variety of notion in the minds of your readers. The variety will be there because of two factors in the readers: their varying memories -- linked to previous hearings of the word 'gravitas', and to the various works they've heard, seen, etc, -- and their varying receiving and processing apparatuses, their brains. (I compare the "apparatus" here roughly to the computer-cum-applications as it came from the store, and the "memories" to everything thereafter stored on the hard drive. Except that in my comparison no two brain-computers are exactly alike, and neither are the stored infos.) I figure you had a notion in your mind as you wrote. I too have notions as I write -- and, as I've inflicted on our readers too many times before, I'm aware my notion is indeterminate, indefinite, multiplex and transitory. 'Gravitas' conjures for me me a sense of weight, seriousness, dignity, or importance. The "processing" part of my brain then questions whether or not all the works that have given me an aesthetic experience displayed any or all of those various "qualities". Certainly in theater, "tragedies" have. And the works of "serious" music have. But how about comedies, and certain "songs" from Cole Porter to Kander and Ebb? And how about Dickinson's "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass" with its line about the snake's causing the young poet to feel "zero at the bone"? Emily could zing me sometimes with a single line - but I'm reluctant to say that every such line displayed weight, seriousness, dignity, or importance. Earlier I said "I'm fairly firm about saying I know [an aesthetic experience] when I feel it." I now think that line may be a poorly thought through blunder. In sum, it occurs to me that because I'm inclined to respect William's celebration of "gravitas", I think it has prevented me from adequately considering if I shouldn't allow that extremely effective though "light weight" lines, songs, wonderful action moments in certain movies, even expertly told jokes give me a sensation that I should call aesthetic experiences. I can imagine William's now telling me that I didn't get his notion when he wrote the word 'gravitas'.
