Re: FWk: Re: Double-stranded Economics

[Ray Evans Harrell]

Hello Brad, Brian,    I am enjoying your conversation immensely as I always do.   I have great respect for your minds.   That being said I would like to contribute a little point or to.   Wittgenstein believed that ethics and aesthetics can not be spoken or written about; they must be shown.   I think this probably came from a time when too much was being said about ethics and aesthetics and too little done, so out of frustration he resorted to dramatic statements much as Kierkegaard insisted that nobody had the courage to have a real war when in fact they had been in a real war for quite some time.    Other than that the statement is not true.    It is not either/or but both. e.g. Words can never describe a sound but they are necessary to point out things in the sound that those who are experiencing it for the first time, either as performer or audience, would miss.    Words, like teaching, are meant to draw attention to and focus upon the comprehension of technique, but they are not a substitute for the orginial symbol unless they are the orginal art work.     In the way that Whitman's poem shows us the ineffable.   I read the poem and I don't perform it that way.    In fact, quiet rightly, you needed the bold mark to point out what your reading was.   Even then I still might not have believed that it only showed the ineffable  although one of the things that it showed could have been that.   If I examine the poem's key words I get the absurdity of a scientific human trying to comprehend a universe (the one Whitman knows in his head) that cannot be comprehended in the modality the scientist has chosen.      It is not about ineffibility but the arrogance of the scientist claiming and being acclaimed for describing the "real" Universe with his simple tools.   If I may analyse a bit:       Poem Keywords for meaning stress, i.e. semantics (nouns + modifiers and process verbs + modifiers = meaning stress)   heard  learned astronomer, proofs, figures, were ranged  columns, shown charts  diagrams,  add, divide,  measure, sitting heard astronomer lectured  much applause lecture-room, soon unaccountable became tired sick, rising gliding out wandered off mystical moist night-air  time time, Looked up perfect silence stars. Walt Whitman REH Interpretive stress, i.e. contextual semantics   When I heard the learned astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When  I   sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much  applause in the lecture-room, How soon  unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising... and gliding out...  I wandered off by myself,  (pause) In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, (pause) Looked up in perfect silence at the stars. Walt Whitman (character analysis for above performance interpretation) WW Job:  Work is poetry with little financial recompense while job is as an opera critic for a Brooklyn Newspaper. WW Emotion: anger/irritation WW Question:   why am I being asked to endure this bore who makes a living doing such inadaquate things? WW Main Point: This scientist, this tone deaf baby has no knowledge whatsoever of what he speaks                                 when compared to the possibilities of the real thing. WW Postlude:  That scientist thinks he's a star but stars are found only in heaven.   For further reading, reference my old teacher Dorothy Uris' book, "To Sing In English" as well as my French coach Pierre Bernac's   "The Interpretation of French Song."     Dorothy's book speaks for the semantic and syntactical elements of performance diction that she recieved in the old Hollywood Studio Star  System.   She was a young actress at the feet of the coaches for the system that created great technical actors from people who they "discovered" with a "look" at lunch counters.     Maestro Bernac was just as tough but without Ms. Uris's niceness.       The Performance  of poetry is everything because it is highly specific in its use of poetic diction.    On the "other hand" it open's up into the "Universal" in as many ways as its reader's technical knowledge, imagination and desire will pursue.   There can never be one interpretation unless the poem is overly obvious and not very good poetry.      Brian, I accept that your interpretation is both a good and valid one.   One can never draw, however, scientific conclusions from such a thing since science struggles to lower complexity through a general over-simplified projection to practical ends,  poetry struggles to express the whole of the Universe through a blossoming specificity that reaches to the ends of the possibilities of meaning in its interaction with the reader/performer and if there is one, the external audience.     The point of art is that all things are expressible at least as metaphor but not quantifiable or maybe that quantifying it is a useless activity in the long run.   As the Psycho-linguist Robert Brown points out in "How Shall a Thing Be Called"  (Psycholinguistics, ed. Brown; Free Press 1958) literal concrete meanings of things are the realm of children while the true abstractions are the realms of adults.    Poetry seeks to include both in its creative process.   Quantifying is used in some poetry (the Open Forms of the Minimalists for example) and in the structures of musical forms but it is not the point.   It is but a tool for what the point is.    A ritual form that reaches through repetition down into the core soul of what makes people human.   These forms are not simple as a great Math problem is not simple, but there are fewer of them and they form the legs of our identity that makes us French, English, German, Lakota, Japanese or Cherokee to list a few.    Consider that almost the entire repertory of Jazz is built around the simple 16 & 32 bar song form with the exploration of their possibilities through extempraneous improvisation built in the moment.   Harry said the purpose of science was to simplfy.   I think that is too simple.   The purpose of science is the pursuit of a certain kind of practical truth and as you become good at it, it becomes less complicated because of your mastery.    Aphorisms are not truths.   They are just aphorisms, that is why the resorting to algebraic formulas is a more clear specific.      If you speak or write that formula and you understand its implications, it opens up like a flower, but not because it is simple.   It is unambiguous since the letters and numbers are only what you say they are,  plus the agreed upon formulaic use in history.    The same is not true of words.    They have many meanings and a history that often includes and antonymic meaning that creates rather than destroying ambiguity.   Racists make fun of Black street kids for saying "bad" when they mean "good" but the dictionary is filled with that same process again and again.       The lowering of complexity may seem simple to a Master, but to one who does not know the Master scientist's language or has not walked his path, the process is still complex.   Decidedly not simple.    The difference between these two processes is apparent to musical students who are math phobic as well as the young scientists who can't comprehend the sense of musical tones and therefore are "tone dear."     As if it was an issue of hearing, and a talent, rather than two different learned processes of comprehension.     For example:  On this list, what I write is not complicated to me and fits within a perfectly logical framework (for me) but, given many people on this list's lives, it is illogical to write something that they will not read due to their lack of time and inclinations.    They have neither the time, resources or inclination to ferret their way through my posts.    In the psycho-analytic vein I could "put them down" by saying that their brief words are only the top and most obvious layer of the meaning and that I speak for the depths.    That would not be necessarily true and it would also be a rhetorical/political statement rather than a conversation between friends.    I prefer the conversation even if it is in the model of a "paper."     Some, I too, will read and others I also will skip because of a lack of interest in the subject.    But it is rarely because I'm not interested in the person, and I find differing cultural and professional points of view both fascinating and enlightening even when I strenuously disagree.   It has not always been that way but it is now.    I write as an artist, scientist and comedian.    I get my pleasure from the exploration, the pursuit of truths and values and the dialogue with those who do the same.   Also, like late Red Skelton, who I shared the stage with once in my life, I often laugh at my own jokes.  For others it may be misguided, bad grammar, too dense or incomprehensible.    But I do it for my own evolution and dialogue with my friends of similar interests in the Future of Work.   Either way what is simple in my language structure, to me, is not in others.   When the Vienna Circle (Carnap and friends) believed that his Tractatus was the perfect book to launch the Logical Positivist movement, Wittgenstein went to a meeting with them and read passages from Rilke's poetry. They did not invite him back.   Obviously Wittgenstein's model of Tractatus was not their model of Tractatus.    When we finally get to the ability to read each other's minds then this will all disappear but until then we just have to rely upon feed back mechanisms like "This is what I understood you to say,  is that what you meant?"  Wittgenstein reminds us that if science was able to answer all of its questions we would still be left with our most fundamental concerns: are we loved and how well are we able to love.   I agree but find it surprising that anyone wouldn't. Good to think with you.   Read a couple of good papers tonight on the the Public Goods Game, or what we in the arts call the curse of strategic giving:    http://w3.arizona.edu/~econ/working_papers/PGID_FINAL.pdf   There is a lot more being written about this than there was three years ago when I used to get into fights with everyone on the list over this issue.    It seems they are all catching up.    Neat!     And they are doing it with NUMBERS.    Boy that must be fun for them.   Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED]