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| September 2005 »
Tipping Point, Turning Point, whatever, maybe it’s here.
Along with gas prices, the price of heating oil, natural gas and electricity is going up quickly. Pretty much every other little thing will go up fairly soon too as a result. By 45% in some cases, beginning this year. Schools are turning down the thermostats this winter. People are already going out less — less disposable income and people need gas to go out in America. Needless to say, the oil companies will make a killing — until, as some regular folks threaten, people begin to turn to alternative energy sources.
Detroit still is pushing gas-guzzlers while the Japanese are introducing hybrids. (Not that the Japanese aren’t above selling a truck or SUV either.) Sort of fiddling while Rome burns.
There’s a trickle-down effect — once oil and gas cost more the electricity will eventually cost more and it will cost more to pretty much make anything and do any kind of business. Even service industries have to heat or cool their offices and run their computers. Everything will eventually cost more and folks will go out less. Maybe they’ll form communities again and sprawl will start to reverse itself, to implode.
That’s my rant. Those nutty solar panels and funny bio-diesel cars might not be such a joke before long.
Re: Japanese onomatopoeia [link]:
...This illustrates an unexpected fact of onomatopoeia. Although each language imitates sounds occurring in nature which are presumably the same everywhere in the world, each language interprets these sounds in accord with its own sound system and culture.
In addition to those onomatopoeia which imitate the sounds of nature, called gisei-go in Japanese, Japanese recognizes two additional types of onomatopoeia: one that basically suggests states of the external world (gitai-go), and another that basically names internal mental conditions and sensations (gijoo-go). There is some overlap between the two.
For example, while the word "bashi-bashi" suggests the natural sound of smacking some one across the head, "ton-ton" suggests someone's knocking on a door, and "guu-guu" depicts someone in a deep sleep accompanied by snoring. Gitai-go terms such as "gocha-gocha", a state of disorder common to apartments, and "pika-pika", which depicts a shiny object but also describes a "spic and span" place of residence, seem to be completely opaque to non-Japanese (although pika-pika is probably related to the verb hikaru "to shine".
[I used the phrase "Pika pika" in the Talking Heads song “Swamp” to refer to the Hiroshima explosion]
The fact that whole dictionaries consisting of so-called Japanese onomatopoeia, gisei-go, gitai-go, and gijoo-go, exist testifies to the fact that many of these expressions are equally opaque and require interpretation to the Japanese themselves.
Additionally, if the distinction between the external gitai-go and internal gijoo-go onomatopoeia isn't clear, there is good reason for this. While some of these forms are clearly descriptive of internal states, e.g., ira-ira "frustrated" (the Japanese press labeled the seemingly unending war between Iran and Iraq the "Ira-Ira War"), there are many which can be used to describe both external or internal states, for example, "gocha-gocha", which can quite accurately describe either the cluttered state of my office or that of my mind.
Can you imagine? States of mind have sounds?! Concepts have sounds!? Who’d ‘a thunk it? It this a kind of synethesia? So therefore a musical composition (musique concrete, most likely) COULD be a real map or analogy or model of a progression of concepts —a sonic map of a progression of thoughts… sometimes proceeding one after another, in traditional logical fashion, and sometimes overlapping, rushing onward, and sometimes happening simultaneously — as sounds certainly do, an maybe thoughts too? Each sound corresponds to an idea or concept, and then logically (or not) leads on to the next… eventually arriving as some sonic/psychic conclusion. Or merely an ending. Who needs philosophy? Who needs books? We have sounds.
[See Also: 4.16.05 post re: songwriting]
Saw Grizzly Man, Herzog’s new documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a surfer dude who decides to live with the bears in Alaska and documented it all on video — until he and his girlfriend got eaten.
From the first scene the movie is amazing. Treadwell is a nut the likes of which Herzog has always been drawn to… a loner who sets an impossible task for himself. A person with a vision who will defy death to realize it. I recently saw another of his docs about an Englishman who decides to fly a homemade hot air balloon over the Guyana jungle. His previous attempt had ended in the death of a cameraman, but, ever determined, the loopy Brit soldiers on — and succeeds.
What’s also similar about the Brit and the surfer dude is that they both play to the camera — they’re both always “on”, playing as being someone. In the Englishman’s case he adopts the persona of a BBC presenter, loudly and simply explaining things to the invisible viewer. Treadwell in turn adopts the persona of something similar to Steve Irwin, the hyper Aussie Crocodile “Hunter”. He’s got his cool shades and bandana and he’s constantly jumping in front of his video camera, whispering to the imaginary audience, while a massive grizzly forages immediately behind him. He names them all, and is constantly telling them he loves them.
This, to Herzog, points to the true subject of the doc — the skewed view that people have of nature. Treadwell, according to one Alaskan, seemed to think the bears were like people in bear costumes. Like a child he sees them as cute, lovable and therefore if he can “be” like one of them, they will accept him, and he probably believes, love him back. He goes on about how dangerous they are, but seems to feel he, with his willingness to join them, is somehow and exception.
Herzog believes Treadwell and others idealize nature, or more likely turn to nature when civilization becomes difficult or too much to deal with. They’re escaping into a vision of nature that doesn’t exist, in his opinion. Herzog believes that nature is indifferent, cruel, violent and chaotic… and sometimes beautiful. These somewhat New Age folks seem to feel that they have some spiritual kinship and connection with animals and thus with forces of nature (at one point Treadwell summons rain)… a connection civilized people have lost.
In the end what seems like a hungry and unfamiliar bear eats Treadwell and his girlfriend, effectively making Herzog’s argument for him.
I also think the movie has another subject — the desire of some of these nutters to recreate themselves as television personalities. It doesn’t seem isolated — even the coroner in the grizzly movie seems to adopt a TV-inspired persona. He becomes a sort of nightmare version of Mr. Rogers, smiling a crooked smile and gently explaining in detail exactly how the bear dismembered Treadwell and the woman.
I wonder if there is afloat a strange notion that if one is adrift, lost, floundering in life, one can simply take on the persona of some imaginary TV personality and problem solved. You’ve found the escape hatch! It leads into the tube! (or flat screen, these days.) It also seems that the virtual world of TV is as real as the real world for these people — the “spirit world” is visible, and there are lots of channels too! Sometimes it seems that this mythical world validates the real world for many people — things are good and important depending on how much they conform to the TV reality.
From the first scene I thought I could have been watching Owen Wilson playing this guy — it was too perfect to be real. Now I think that it’s a mobius world — Treadwell is playing a character that is possibly inspired by a character Owen Wilson played in a movie, which was probably based on someone like Treadwell.
My head hurts.
BBC news:
A Japanese man has made a robot woman:
Here she is with her Pygmalion:
Apparently she responds to sounds — and even looks in the direction of someone speaking. Blinks her eyes. Note that she’s demure — she’s no anime heroine, no big eyes and humongous breasts — she’s the kind of girl you’d bring home to mama.
Here is the Greek version (Bullfinch):
Pygmalion saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to abhor the sex, and resolved to live unmarried. He was a sculptor, and had made with wonderful skill a statue of ivory, so beautiful that no living woman came anywhere near it. It was indeed the perfect semblance of a maiden that seemed to be alive, and only prevented from moving by modesty. His art was so perfect that it concealed itself and its product looked like the workmanship of nature. Pygmalion admired his own work, and at last fell in love with the counterfeit creation. Oftentimes he laid his hand upon it as if to assure himself whether it were living or not, and could not even then believe that it was only ivory. He caressed it, and gave it presents such as young girls love, — bright shells and polished stones, little birds and flowers of various hues, beads and amber. He put raiment on its limbs, and jewels on its fingers, and a necklace about its neck. To the ears he hung earrings and strings of pearls upon the breast. Her dress became her, and she looked not less charming than when unattired. He laid her on a couch spread with cloths of Tyrian dye, and called her his wife, and put her head upon a pillow of the softest feathers, as if she could enjoy their softness.
The festival of Aphrodite was at hand — a festival celebrated with great pomp at Cyprus. Victims were offered, the altars smoked, and the odor of incense filled the air. When Pygmalion had performed his part in the solemnities, he stood before the altar and timidly said, "Ye gods, who can do all things, give me, I pray you, for my wife" — he dared not say "my ivory virgin," but said instead — "one like my ivory virgin." Aphrodite, who was present at the festival, heard him and knew the thought he would have uttered; and as an omen of her favor, caused the flame on the altar to shoot up thrice in a fiery point into the air. When he returned home, he went to see his statue, and leaning over the couch, gave a kiss to the mouth. It seemed to be warm. He pressed its lips gain, he laid his hand upon the limbs; the ivory felt soft to his touch and yielded to his fingers like the wax of Hymettus. While he stands astonished and glad, though doubting, and fears he may be mistaken, again and again with a lover's ardor he touches the object of his hopes. It was indeed alive! The veins when pressed yielded to the finger and again resumed their roundness. Then at last the votary of Aphrodite found words to thank the goddess, and pressed his lips upon lips as real as his own. The virgin felt the kisses and blushed, and opening her timid eyes to the light, fixed them at the same moment on her lover. Aphrodite blessed the nuptials she had formed, and from this union Paphos was born, from whom the city, sacred to Aphrodite, received its name.
Saw The Century of the Self, a 4-hour documentary that draws a line from Freud to consumerism to self-actualization movements and finally to politics through polling.
It’s a 4-part epic that ties together a hell of a lot of ideas —
• Public relations is wartime propaganda morphed into a form (and phrase) acceptable to the public in order to create a nation of consumers. Manufacturers needed to create constant demand. Goebbels admired the American science of public relations.
• Freud’s idea that the nasty instincts repressed in the human unconscious are only waiting to be tapped by Nazis or whomever has the wherewithal to turn on the spigot. Therefore, democracy is not the best form of government, as people are A) easily manipulated B) don’t know what they want C) will often vote and make choices based on irrational desires.
• The frustrated and derailed political and cultural movements of the sixties found new outlets in self-actualization cults, which led to the Me decades. A Nation of One.
• Psychology-based polling techniques in the 60s and 70s identified people based on their desires and self-perceptions rather than by class, as they had previously been identified — they could then be marketed to more effectively as individuals.
• The New Politics has abandoned issues and replaced them with buttons and buzzwords. These are then used to play on people’s desires and fears. Abortion, gay marriage, the pledge of allegiance, teaching evolution — all symbolic details that hook voters and allow the politicians to avoid having to deal with larger issues like health care, the economy, education or justice. “Democracy” becomes a matter of pandering to what people say they want, desires that are often conflicting, like wanting both better schools and lower taxes.
From a book review in the NY Times:
In 1914 Henry Ford doubled his workers’ wages to five dollars a day. In return for this seemingly generous gesture he demanded that the workers lead “moral” lives. There were company inspectors who would monitor the home environment, on the watch for drinking or other habits that might interfere with productivity.
Here might be seen a parallel between the Soviet management of society and the U.S. corporate version. As if all roads lead to similar ends.
Anyway, the “sociological department” of the company, as it was called, wanted to mass-produce a clean-cut, happy, productive, healthy employee, which they referred to as the “human unit”. No kidding. “We want to make men in this factory as well as automobiles,” Ford said.
In another article, a review of a compilation of recently unearthed Edwardian-era film footage, a similar picture is presented. This footage was originally shot as a kind of sideshow attraction in the early part of the century — documenting everyday life in the recently industrialized towns in the north of England. They would then show people images of themselves, their lives and their rituals, and charge money.
There are images of schoolchildren, pliant and docile, emerging in little orderly regiments from their classes. This footage is followed by scarily similar scenes of rows of identical workers entering and working in the factories and steel mills. The schools appear to be merely factories for producing productive servile workers. Out one door and in the other.
An interview in Cabinet magazine with a man who has invented a new form of symbolic logic. He also elucidates how symbolic systems like his (and like the Arabic numerals we use every day) make relationships visible and obvious — relationships that remain deep and hidden and obscure if we don’t have the tools to help us visualize them. [link]
I woke up, heart racing, in fear of a little virtual man I had created. He was like a green translucent Gumby, but shaped more like a generic men’s room figure. Thin, maybe an inch think, somewhat floppy, like a giant almost flat gummy worm person. It had no features or expression.
It was terrifying the way things are for inexplicable reasons in dreams. There was no clear threat or danger. Puzzling, too, that a virtual figure could have somehow taken on a life of its own, and equally terrifying was the knowledge that if I chopped or sliced it the pieces then, hydra-like, might multiply into more of the green men. It also seemed somehow a precursor to more virtual events and creatures “leaking” into the real world. Silently entering the world beyond the confines of the monitor. These leaks would be material, but not 100%. Like ghosts, it seems that — if this were indeed happening — the creatures would exist in some in-between world — a world partly of the makers’ imaginations and resulting computer iterations, and partly in a form in which those immaterial forms then take on lives of their own, independent of their creators — sort of as ideas do. If the forms visible on monitors are the result of the meeting of the operators’ imaginations and the algorithms that render them into visible shapes and forms then they are like representations of ideas. They are the physical manifestation of imaginings. And like all imaginings they have a life of their own. Yow.
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