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So is all of this talk a problem with the welfare
state or is it just human cycles that exist in every system? I don't
see all of these mags., like the Economist, complaining about capitalism
because the artists are forced to follow the "starving artist"
model. No one says that its a problem for capitalism that
sculptors have to mortgage their cars, if they can afford one, just to get
material for the next sculpture and for computer artists, its "mortgages their
lives", given the expense of these monsters. In Socialist society it is
much easier for an artist to do their work and eat while here if you
eat, most artists, even some of the very best like all of our
major composers and poets, have to give up your
work.
The Starving Artist myth for creativity is nothing
but a sop for capitalists not to take the heat for NOT stimulating creativity
and innovation. The supply and demand model is so
inadequate that my General Manager attended an artistic conference in Portland
and most of the people that she approached had no idea who America's greatest
living composer was. The man who has written more and won more
prizes, been performed more and made more money, but not enough to live one,
brought more cultural fame to America and was President of the highest scholars
society, The American Society of Arts and Letters, wasn't even
known. The only living composer they knew was Philip Glass who
is the sole serious composer commercial success in America. If you
took a modern music history book, Glass is the only live composer that any of
you would have the vaguest recognition of. The same was true of this
general conference of Americans for the Arts. You can say what
you will about Scandinavian composers but at least the Scandinavians know them
and even the old Soviet Union performed and created massive amounts of music
that these Russian musicians, who are now starving like the rest of the
Capitalist world, knew and loved. Americans have no knowledge or
control over their whole aural aesthetic landscape. It is a vast
sprawl worse than any architectural urban sprawl and is only tolerable because
it ceases once you turn off the media. Successful Americans
are either Cuckoos, kicking everyone else's children out while they put the
parental resources of the world to supporting their own kids (wealthy) or they
are Mockingbirds singing everyone else's songs and neither valuing and in most
cases not having their own songs to sing. The whole vast history of
America is one evolution from Cuckoos to Mockingbirds with not an original in
the bunch.
Doctors are finding the same economic issues with
becoming privately liable. And yet you guys just keep arguing
retail. Given even the cheapest cost issues on a human life, without some
form of protective subsidy it simply isn't cost effective to take the risk and
save lives. Teachers long ago were reduced to teaching for
altruism in a market economy. About the only thing that you
can truly guarantee follows supply and demand are retail objects or
Gold. There are so many crucial human endeavors that don't fit the
market model its a wonder that we don't get it and come up with some other
plan. How about legal fees? Giuliani took
such advantage of the system that he prosecuted the small fry enemies in court
which he always lost but the city paid for the prosecutions and his enemies went
away broke. That's a working political
Democracy? I didn't see Clinton using the powers of the
Federal government against his prosecutors in a similar fashion.
Giuliani left his family and his son and persecuted his wife for this family
loving party and yet he is still beloved. Clinton had a concubine as
allowed in the Jewish bible and he was reviled for playing polite political
games of "deniability". After the special prosecutors went
after Nixon and Reagan, nothing got done because they were so
frozen. Clinton is blamed for not doing enough even though he was
harassed for all eight years with this stuff. If he had been a
Republican he would have constantly hauled them into court and sued Mellon
Scaife and the Fox News Channel. Today we have a solidly Republican
media and that is because the Democrats are such wusses and the only ones that
seem to believe in democracy at all. Democracies, like open
societies are subject to fascism through terrorism and the Republicans have been
practicing political terrorism since Hoover screwed everything up and they were
disgraced.
Democracy doesn't work without a committed,
informed and educated citizenry. That is in conflict with the baser
principles of capitalism. It is only because we have such commitment
to the sins of our fathers and the culture it engendered that we are so
unimaginative as to not even question our way out of this bipolar model that
simply reinforces failure on every level but for the few and in material
technology. Also they lie, but that's another post, or maybe you
could reread Natalia's analysis for my Festival.
People can "take her on" for her science but if Derryl and she were as nasty to
you about your knowledge of the aesthetics and the art's business, as the list
was to her about her science then you would leave in a huff. If you
want to know what artists think of all this watch the second funny movie
about the therapist and mobster "Analyze That" and look at the movie
people. The director and the actor playing the mob while the real
mob is swirling around them. The "step un' fetch it" character of
the director and the actor who gets beaten up just to get some reality in his
lines and thanks the man who beats him. Those are the
societal metaphors that my profession has had to accept to live in
this hell.
Artists are often taken to task for their
connection to the non-visual non-corporeal subtler energies.
Without those energies a trapeze artist would fall and the ballet would have
never existed. Theater and music plays in those fields and is so
difficult that lives are always precarious at best. Those of us who
live constantly with the spirits are not as fascinated as those who only
occasionally wake up to their existence.
When someone wakes up or moves into a busy area
filled with "psychic energy" (Freud's term) like areas where
I've been around Vancouver Island for example, the more sensitive are
"touched." But most people can walk through the Anthropology museum
in Vancouver and feel nothing but a vague sense of wonder. What I
saw was art ripped from its context, objects and clothing of people who had
died violently sacrificed to the quest for material comfort by the
"wounded" of Europe and Asia who were driven from their homes because their
own relatives had no use for them. Today, both Asia and Europe
is a different place after those wars and they seem to have discovered their
souls. Eventually, you learn to accept the muse, the spirits or whatever
you want to call it and just live with them. Like the French
impressionists. By and large the subtler energies are not
communicative but you can mess with them and that is not such a good thing for
your soul.
Every word that I write and you read is taken in
the screen of your own experience and prejudices. You and I use
these scratches to open our own reality within ourselves. We
use each other to grow from within. We must be careful not to abuse
the materials but we must also know the quality and history of the
materials we use lest we be foolish and destructive of other
peoples.
When I am rough with some of you it is an act of
respect and long term acquaintance. We have a history to bounce our
current life off of. You can be rough
back. Passion is rough. But I remember a
car that I had just had a new "ring job" done. No
one told me that new "rings" weren't durable and needed to "seat" with the
rest of the motor. So I promptly drove them too hard and ruined the
job. We sent the best football talent that we had ever seen to
Oklahoma University with the famous Bud Wilkinson coach and Wilkinson put this
upstart into a scrimmage with the top college football team in America
and in the first play they blew out his knee. Even the best coach in
the country can be stupid sometimes. He lost a great player but Larry
Carnes lost his career. Who paid? Larry did.
I paid to have the rings redone. Liability is the only way
to enforce responsibility. Liability is at odds with the capitalist
system. That Nuclear power that Harry likes has a 300 million
dollar cap on liability for accidents. Without that cap there would
be no Nuclear industry. The private sector would never finance such
a thing with such a liability. The same was true of starting
the internet and of chip-fab laboratories. Without privilege
bestowed by the government on science through those laboratories we would have
no micro-processors. Private retail is good at harvesting but
lousy at development of anything truly complex. Do you truly trust
the drug companies to cure the world's health ills or do you trust the drug
companies plus the Federal government's support, back up and protection in
developing those products?
Winner take all game strategy is a stupid
strategy for finding your way out of a cave that is slowly filling
with water. DeLay, the Republicans, the economists who are in
control at the moment, the market and fundamentalist Christians all seem locked
in a strategy that will not make it easier for us to do our work but
impossible. The fight is going on everywhere and even on this
list. Retail is ordinary, banal and uncreative. It
is lazy and unwilling to move without being threatened. It is stupid
in that it assumes that the rest of the world is just like them. Only when
it sacrifices the lives of the "losers" in their game do they feel strong
and it takes the "losers" fighting back, for them to become
creative. Theoretical science is no more "productive" in the
retail economic sense than classical composers. You need look
no further than retail to explain Granada, Panama and Iraq. To claim
that this government believed what the rest of us knew was nuts is to give them
credit for being insane. They aren't. They are just
retail, banal, provincial and in the tradition of poor sportsmanship that has
permeated this culture from the outset. After all, fair play, level
fields and sportsmanship have nothing to do with retail. That's
why Henry George has a certain amount of resonance for me but frankly, I don't
trust him. At his roots, he's just as retail minded as the
next Willy Loman. One can love the practicality of the
common man but one should also not confuse him with Einstein, Beethoven or
Chekov. To see the world, you have to be willing to climb and that
isn't "productive" or "cost effective" and there's little demand for
it.
Ray Evans Harrell
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- [Futurework] A Volvo without tyres Keith Hudson
- [Futurework] Re: A Volvo without tyres Ray Evans Harrell
- [Futurework] Re: A Volvo without tyres Tor F�rde
- Re: [Futurework] Re: A Volvo without tyres Ray Evans Harrell
- Re: [Futurework] Re: A Volvo without tyres Ed Weick
